Coldfire
by darkstorm5000
Summary: When Iceman and Firestar find themselves being irresistibly drawn to one another, everything changes when they take on the Brotherhood and receive some unexpected help from a certain friendly, neighborhood webslinger. Part 4 of 4 posted.
1. The Great Escape

Coldfire 

Written by Darkstorm5000

Disclaimer: The X-Men and related characters in their various incarnations are the property of Marvel Comics and Marvel Enterprises.

**………………………………………….**

A/N: This story picks up after my previous fic The New Mutants.

Part 1- The Great Escape

At Xavier's School for the Gifted located in Salem Center, New York, tonight wasn't all too different than most other school nights, especially for Bobby Drake. While most of the of the teachers and the older senior-level students had departed a couple of days ago for Japan, doing so in great anticipation of attending the wedding of Logan and Mariko Yashida, Bobby had volunteered to stay behind and help Professor Xavier in training the school's younger, junior-level students. And when the Professor was unexpectedly called away this evening on an urgent personal matter, it was Bobby whom he entrusted the school, leaving him in charge there.

Sitting in the mansion's spacious and very accommodating living room, television time was being split between Monday night football and pro-wrestling as Bobby, Samuel Guthrie, James Proudstar, Roberto Da Costa, Jamie Madrox, and Danielle Moonstar, the only girl in the house who seemed to be the least bit interested in either program, all watched and flipped between the two shows on the large-screen TV in there.

And as debate continued amongst some of them as to if, or when, current World Champion John Cena would lose his title to the up-and-comer Carlito, their discussion was interrupted when the phone rang. James was the one who got up to answer it, going over to a small table that sat behind the living room's sofa.

"Hello, Xavier's Schoo...Who? Oh, let me get him." James said, as he spoke to an automated operator on the line, pressing a button on the phone's cordless receiver while walking over and handing the phone to Bobby, "Um, it's for you."

As Bobby now stood up from his seat in the living room and held the cordless phone up to his ear, the other individuals in the room paused their debate and quieted down significantly. They then heard a number of somewhat interesting responses from Bobby, as he spoke into the receiver.

"Yes, I'll accept the charges."

_(A brief pause, as Bobby pushed a button on the phone, and then stood listening intently to the caller on the other end)_

"Yeah. No, of course I don't mind, I was just sitting here watching…"

_(Another brief pause, as the small group gathered in the living room saw Bobby further listening to this mystery caller)_

"You have to calm down, so you can tell me what's got you so…"

_(A slightly longer pause this time, as the voice on the other side of the line sounded frantic, almost on the verge of tears)_

"So you just took off? Tell me where you're at, and I'll come meet you."

_(Even longer pause this time, as James, Sam, Jamie, Roberto, and Dani became very curious when they saw Bobby making mental notes of an address now being given to him)_

"I'm pretty sure I know where that's….okay, I'll see you in about an hour or so."

_(A small beep was heard from the phone, as Bobby now held the receiver down in front of him after disconnecting the call)_

"Something's come up. I need to head into the city, and while I'm gone Sam and Dani are in charge, so I want everyone to listen to them." Bobby said in a very serious voice, as he pointed at sixteen year-old Sam and fifteen year-old Dani, who were two of the oldest and presumably the most responsible amongst the junior students at the school, "I shouldn't be gone too long."

"Hope you enjoy the booty-call." Jamie teasingly remarked to Bobby, who was already over at the living room's doorway.

Bobby simply turned back round and rolled his eyes slightly in response to Jamie's comment, before heading upstairs and preparing to leave.

**……………………………………..…**

"…Okay, I'll see you in a little while."

As she stood in front of a payphone located on this New York City sidewalk, Angelica Jones wiped the freshly-formed tears from her eyes and thought to herself that it was funny just how much a person's life can change in an instant. At least it would've been funny to her, if the truths that had been revealed to her hadn't been so devastating.

On this day, Angelica had learned that the Headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy Emma Frost, who was her teacher and the woman whom Angelica had come to hold in extremely high regard, was nowhere near the person that she thought she was. Worse yet, Angelica had also learned that the Massachusetts Academy itself was not what she had believed it to be either.

Angelica now turned and went inside to Marcello's Pizzeria, a restaurant in the Midtown neighborhood that stood right next to the payphone that she had just been using. As Angelica sat down in one of the table booths inside she went ahead and ordered a diet soda for herself, since she knew she'd have quite a bit of time on her hands in waiting for Bobby's arrival. The main reason that she had called him was because she felt that he might be one of the few people in the world that could possibly understand what she was going through.

And with ample opportunity to sit back and reflect on everything that had happened today, Angelica thought about how she was going to try and explain such a seemingly unreal tale to Bobby…

_(Flashback to earlier in the day, back at the exclusive Massachusetts Academy located in Snow Valley, Massachusetts)_

The majestic backdrop that the surrounding Berkshire Mountains provided for the campus of the Massachusetts Academy was awe-inspiring, to say the least, especially now with their peak tops displaying the faintest hints of the season's first snowfall.

But for fifteen year-old Angelica Jones, it didn't really matter what the weather was like. She was always in the mood to head outside and travel across the school's expansive well-kept landscape to its horse stables, which Headmistress Emma Frost maintained out at the campus' edge. Angelica couldn't wait to get out there to see Butter Rum, who was her favorite horse and one of the few friends that she felt she actually had at the school. Together, Angelica and Butter Rum would go out on lengthy riding excursions through the surrounding grassy pastures, an activity that Angelica looked forward to more than anything else every day, even to the point of often staying out at the stables beyond the time allotted to her by her Headmistress for such extracurricular pursuits.

As Angelica now hastily made her way back towards her dorm along one of the wide brick-tiled pathways across the Academy's enormous campus, having once again stayed out riding with Butter Rum longer than she was supposed to, Angelica ended up unexpectedly running into another party outside at this late afternoon hour right by Conrad Hall. Conrad Hall served as the residency dorm to the school's senior-level students, and like most of the buildings on campus, it had been originally constructed more than a century ago with numerous renovations having taken place to it since.

"It's almost five o'clock 'Wall-flower', shouldn't you already be in bed by now or somethin'?" Lance Alvers, self-appointed school smart-ass tauntingly said to Angelica, as they had now crossed paths on the walkway outside between Conrad Hall and the campus dining hall.

"No, but if you must know, I was out riding at the stables and I just got through." Angelica resentfully replied to Lance's remark, as she came up to him wearing a dark-brown riding helmet, a coral cotton-knit sweater, khaki riding-pants and brown leather riding boots.

"Well, thanks for tellin' me somethin' I didn't really care about." Lance insultingly told Angelica, as he was holding a large and rather noticeable paper sack in his hand.

"What've you got in there?" Angelica now curiously asked the boy before her, who had brown hair that ran halfway down to his shoulder and was wearing his customary denim cut-off vest, a black t-shirt underneath, black leather gloves with the finger holes cut-out of them, and a pair of faded denim blue-jeans that were accessorized with a pair of black boots.

"Just some shit I raided from the vending machines in the dining hall." Lance told Angelica, as he opened up the bag in his hand, and held it down low enough for her to see the plethora of junkfood within.

"I figured you guys would have that stuff in your dorm already?" Angelica said to him, as she took her riding helmet off and let her long, flowing red hair fall down across shoulders and down her back.

"We do, but we have to beat someone who's got a real appetite to it, else it's all over." Lance said to Angelica, making a vague reference to one of the school's older and very hefty residents, Frederick J. Dukes.

Although to Angelica and most everyone else around campus he was simply known as Roderick Docks the school's maintenance man, which was the assumed name and undercover guise that he had been living under since his arrival at the Massachusetts Academy a few months ago.

"It must be kinda cool to live in a separate dorm from everyone else. I mean, it's almost like you guys are living on your own." Angelica said, as she and Lance were, for once, having something that almost resembled a normal conversation. Which was a rare occurrence for them, since Lance usually only spoke to Angelica when he was hurling insults her way.

"You could be livin' up in there with us too. That is, if you really wanted to." Lance now cryptically implied to Angelica, as he pointed over at Conrad Hall close by.

"I doubt it. You have to be promoted to the senior-squad first, and Miss Frost doesn't think I'm ready yet." Angelica said to him, referring to the exemplary status given to those students whom the school's Headmistress felt had mastered and now excelled in the use of their various mutant abilities, a group that currently consisted of Lance Alvers, John Allerdyce, Tabitha Smith, Manuel de la Rocha, Joanna Cargill, and Jennifer Stavros.

"Actually, 'Frosty' already thinks you're ready." Lance told Angelica, as he now held the large paper sack down by his side.

"How do you know?" Angelica asked him, her riding helmet now securely in her grasp down in front of her, as the sun was about to begin its descent out on the horizon.

"I'm not supposed to tell you but…" Lance said, as he paused and a mischievous smile spread across his face, "Well, just c'mon in and I'll show you."

With that, Lance motioned for Angelica to follow him into the senior student's residence. After closing the front door behind them and then going over to drop off the bag that contained numerous chips, sodas, and candy bars on the kitchen's table, Lance took Angelica down a lengthy hallway that led from the residence's foyer area, the two of them eventually stopping at the end of the hallway where there was a wall with a large framed picture hanging there.

"You wanted to show me this painting?" Angelica, who appeared to be a bit puzzled, now questioned Lance as they stood there staring at the portrait.

"No, dumbass. It's what's behind the painting." Lance responded, as he went up to the painting and pushed it over towards his left.

The painting easily slid over across the wall stained in a cherry-wood color, revealing a small square button hidden behind it. After Lance pressed it, an entire section of the wall rolled open in front of them, further revealing an elevator within.

"I didn't know there was a trick wall in here?" Angelica commented, as she raised an eyebrow and was very surprised by what she had just seen.

"There're a lot of things you don't know about this place." Lance looked over at Angelica and laughingly replied, as the two of them stepped into the elevator and Lance hit a button within that started the elevator car moving downward.

**…………………………………………..**

Upon reaching their sub-level destination, the elevator doors opened up in front of Lance and Angelica to now grant them access to another secret corridor beneath the senior student's residence. Which like a number of other things at the Massachusetts Academy, its existence having been intentionally withheld from Angelica and the rest of her junior-level classmates by Emma Frost.

Now walking down a fluorescent-lit passageway constructed mainly of steel and concrete, Angelica and Lance soon came to a halt once they reached a large metal door that stood at the end of the corridor. Lance then went over to the security pad right next to the steel door and punched in a special access code, which caused the metal door to then open up and reveal a mysteriously dark room before them.

"What's…in here?" Angelica apprehensively turned and asked Lance right next to her, as he proceeded on inside and activated a light switch within.

"It's where we keep our Brotherhood gear." Lance said, as he smiled and turned back around to her, matter-of-factly revealing one of the school's carefully guarded secrets to her.

"**Where you keep your what**!" Angelica loudly inquired, as she certainly had not been expecting him to tell her that.

Angelica then took a few steps into the equipment room behind Lance and saw a number of distinctively designed and colored uniforms hanging up all around the room in there. Some of the uniforms were accompanied by additional accessories and weapons, which had been tailored to the wearer's specific needs. One example would be a dark, reddish-orange colored leather uniform trimmed in black hanging in there, which had orange-tinted goggles and a backpack flamethrower hanging with it, for instance.

"C'mon, don't tell me you're surprised. Didn't you ever wonder why we spend so much time runnin' simulations over in the Combat Room? The whole reason Frosty's been trainin' us so hard is to make sure we're the most powerful group of mutants on Earth, so we can help Magneto keep mutants everywhere from gettin' wiped out by humans that want to see us all dead." Lance further revealed to Angelica, who at first was having a very difficult time processing what he was telling her, "And when you get promoted to the senior-squad, that means you officially become a member of the Brotherhood of Mutants."

Suddenly, it was all beginning to make complete sense to Angelica, and she became slightly wobbly on her feet as if a thick fog that had been clouding her thoughts was now being lifted. Angelica was now able to very vividly remember something, something that happened on one specific day a few months ago.

It was the day when she had first seen the school's new maintenance man Mr. Docks, and couldn't shake the feeling that she had seen this very, VERY large man somewhere before, but didn't quite know when or where. When she had approached her Headmistress about her suspicions, Miss Frost simply told Angelica that it was just her over-active imagination playing tricks on her, and ordered her to forget about it and to never bring this particular subject up again. And Angelica did just as her Headmistress instructed, as she completely dropped the subject and didn't bother to give it a second thought.

At least until now.

"**OHMYGOD**, I remember where I saw Mr. Docks!" Angelica loudly said to Lance, as memories that had been carefully tucked away were now inexplicably coming back to her, "I saw him on TV. He's that Blob-guy that broke out of prison!"

"You catch on reeaaall quick there, Firestar." Lance told Angelica, as he had gone over to one of the corners in the equipment room, now on a search for something in particular through the various uniforms hanging towards the back of the room, "Who do you think helped him bust outta the pen in the first place?"

As Lance continued to quickly sift through the various uniforms, he came across one outfit consisting of a black cloak that was hanging over a tight brown and white-trimmed leather uniform, which had a tag attached to its sleeve that simply read 'Tarot', while another red and blue leather outfit with a pair of gray-tinted goggles had a tag on it that was marked 'Jetstream'. After looking through a few more uniforms hanging on the far wall of the room, Lance finally happened upon the one that he had been looking for.

"Here." Lance said, as he took the outfit hanging in front of him off of its hook and tossed it over to Angelica.

"What's this?" Angelica asked Lance, as she caught the outfit and visually inspected it, seeing that it was a red-leather jacket with matching pants that had thin, yellow swirling flame designs running down the sleeves of the jacket, and up and down the sides of its pants-leg.

"Look at the tag, it's your Brotherhood uniform." Lance told her, as Angelica looked over at him and back down at the decoratively colored uniform again, now seeing that the tag attached to the sleeve indeed said 'Firestar' on it, "Way I overheard Frosty and Magneto talkin' one time, they plan on you becomin' our squad's number one hit-girl. They said somethin' about your powers bein' able to let you carry out assassinations undetected, and that you could use 'em to burn people up from the inside out, or somethin' freaky like that."

"**What**? **No way am I gonna go around using my powers to kill people like that**!" Angelica adamantly protested, after hearing Lance's somewhat 'exaggerated' version of the conversation that he had overheard between Magneto and Miss Frost, which had been about the many possible ways that Angelica and her junior-classmates' powers could be utilized, if circumstances demanded it.

"I don't think anyone's givin' you much of a choice about it. Especially, with the way Frosty can read and control people's minds." Lance said to Angelica, as he continued to egg things on and started to laugh yet again.

A now visibly upset Angelica looked for a moment at the red and yellow-trimmed outfit in her hands, before she forcefully threw it down onto the cold and hard concrete floor. Angelica then turned around and took off running out of the equipment room, heading back down the corridor that she and Lance had just journeyed down a few minutes ago.

**………………………………………….**

Sprinting into the elevator and slamming her hand against the 'up' button inside of it to close its doors, the elevator soon shuttled Angelica back up to the first floor of Conrad Hall. There, she burst out of the secret passageway and ran right into John Allerdyce in the first-floor hallway, who was as surprised to see Angelica in the senior residence as she was startled to see him right there at that moment.

"What's up Angelica?" John inquisitively asked her, as he was trying to figure out just how Angelica had gotten into area that was supposed to be off-limits to her and the other junior students at the school.

But, Angelica didn't bother to respond to John. Instead, she struggled to catch her breath and just looked at John with a teary-eyed and pained expression, as Angelica now knew the truth about him and the rest of the senior-squad. Angelica just continued on right past him crying, and ran out through the residence hall's front door.

Just then as John watched Angelica make her exit, he heard the elevator's gears whirring behind the wall in front of him, and in a few brief moments he saw Lance step out it laughing his head off.

"You wanna tell me what the hell's goin' on around here?" John inquired of Lance, as he spoke to him in a very serious and demanding tone.

"Nothin', except havin' a little fun with Wall-flower. Guess she wasn't quite as ready as I thought she was?" Lance said, as he had actually gotten a thorough amount of enjoyment at seeing Angelica's distraught reaction to learning what Miss Frost and the older students at the school had been up to.

But, as Lance looked over towards the front door, which was still standing wide-open, John suddenly and roughly grabbed him by the collars of his denim vest and pulled Lance over towards him.

"**What'd you do to her**?" John now shouted at Lance, as he got very much up in his face.

"Don't get your panties wrinkled, I was just givin' teacher's pet a grand tour of the equipment room downstairs." Lance replied, as he now forcefully pushed John back away from him.

"Dammit Lance, tell me you didn't. Please, tell me you didn't." John said, as he sighed, took a deep breath and took a few steps backwards, while fully absorbing what Lance was now telling him, "You idiot! I can't believe you took one of the juniors' downstairs without permission."

"I don't know why you're so worried, they're all gonna find out about the Brotherhood sooner or later anyways." Lance pointed out, as he relaxed and leaned up against the wall, which had now slid closed back into place right behind them.

"Maybe, but Frost is gonna completely flip out when she finds out about this." John replied, as he hated to think what his Headmistress' reaction would be when she learned that one of her strictest orders to them had been disobeyed so blatantly.

John knew the tremendous amount of suffering that his Headmistress could inflict on someone with her potent mutant powers of telepathy, if she so wished. John had seen such a demonstration first-hand, as he had been present on one day in particular when one of the school's guardsmen, who had been assigned to the Massachusetts Academy from the Hellfire Club, dared to question Miss Frost and wound up on the receiving end of one of her excruciatingly painful psionic energy-bolts for his troubles.

Now, as John ordered Lance to come with him to the Headmistress' private residence on the campus grounds of the Massachusetts Academy, he wondered what their punishment would be once they told her about this?

**………………………………………….**

In the meantime, Angelica had bolted out of Conrad Hall and continued on unabated clear across campus, traveling the entire distance over to the main residency dorm at Pitman Hall in no time. After rushing upstairs to her room on the dorm's second floor, Angelica collapsed in an emotional heap on her bed, unsure of what she should do next?

"I can't believe Miss Frost's been lying to me all this time. And even worse, I think she really did do something to me with her mental powers, because I keep on gettin' these weird flashbacks ever since I was down in the senior's dorm." Angelica thought to herself, as she was lying on her side and curled up on top of her bed.

Angelica was still feeling deeply hurt, angry, and betrayed over being deceived by her Headmistress. And, she had also begun to suspect that Miss Frost had done the unthinkable, by using her formidable telepathic powers to somehow manipulate her thoughts, perceptions, and specific memories, which Angelica believed was the cause of these unusual flashbacks that were now triggering within her mind.

Then it hit her.

"Wait, since Miss Frost's already used her powers to read my mind and mess with my thoughts already, what if she decides to use her powers to force me to do all of those horrible things like Lance was telling me?" Angelica thought to herself, as this frightening realization caused a cold and unsettling feeling to wash over her.

Then Angelica really began to freak out, and all she wanted to do now was to get as far away from all of this as possible. Angelica felt that she had to go somewhere where she could try and sort through all of the conflicting emotions swirling around inside of her regarding her Headmistress, her classmates, and her school, and the fact that they were all in league with Magneto, whom she and the rest of the world had read and heard about extensively following his failed terrorist attack on Liberty Island, and then his violent escape from the Triskelion detention facility last year.

Normally, Angelica would head out to the stables so that she could brush Butter Rum and talk to him, as she usually did whenever she needed someone to talk to. But instead, Angelica reached down underneath her bed and pulled out a small book bag. Hurriedly, Angelica changed out of her riding attire and into a violet-red colored long-sleeved blouse, a pair of jeans, and a pair of plain white sneakers before going around her bedroom to pack a few articles of clothing and other essential items, placing them into her bag. Then, Angelica grabbed her rose-colored windbreaker jacket and slipped back downstairs to the first floor of Pitman Hall, quietly going back outside through the front door.

Ignoring her Headmistress' known wishes against her students' displaying their mutant powers in public without getting her permission first, Angelica mentally summoned and activated her own impressive mutant abilities. She proceeded to envelope herself in a field of microwave energy, and with that tremendous and raw power now surrounding her, Angelica easily took flight high up into the air. Flying with near jet-propulsion speed, in a matter of just a few seconds Firestar was soon far away from the grounds of the Massachusetts Academy.

Going in a southward direction, Angelica flew high up above a major highway, leaving the house of secrets back in Snow Valley. Now, Angelica was heading for another house down in New Jersey.

Now, she was heading home.

**……………………………………….**

"**YOU DID WHAT**!"

As those words that she had just screamed out continued to reverberate around the living room of her classically-designed Queen Anne home on campus for some time afterwards, it still couldn't convey the level of infuriation that Emma Grace Frost was currently feeling upon learning from her students John Allerdyce and Lance Alvers about what had transpired with Angelica Jones earlier in the day below the senior student's dormitory.

"I'm real sorry about what happened, and as the senior-squad's leader, I take full responsibility for it." John said, as the Brotherhood's deputy-leader stood and spoke to an extremely angry Headmistress Frost, who was still seated on a leather sofa in the room right in front of them.

Emma had been busy reviewing some important business documents, which now lay scattered across the coffee table in front of her, all before John and Lance had shown up to explain what had happened to her.

"I don't want to hear another word!" Emma loudly replied to John's apology in an obviously irritated tone, as she now stood up from the sofa.

Emma had her platinum-blonde hair tied back into a simple ponytail, and she was dressed in a very casual outfit that included an almond-colored pullover sweater. With her strikingly beautiful features and gracefully-fluid movements, Emma looked as though she could have just as easily have been modeling the fall ensemble that she had on. Now up on her feet, Emma proceeded to close her eyes, looking as though she were concentrating very intensely, before she spoke to Lance and John once again.

"It's just as I feared, Angelica is nowhere to be found on the campus' grounds."

Emma then opened her eyes and took a deeply pensive breath, as her piercing blue eyes shot a stern and very penetrating glance at both boys standing on the other side of the coffee table in front of her. Then, Emma turned and walked over to one of the walls in the living room, which had been constructed using expensively vintage hardwood.

"_You two. F__ollow me_." Emma now telepathically demanded of Lance and John, as she had gone over to the wall and activated a secret switch-panel, which opened a small section of the wall to reveal a secret passageway behind it. Somewhat reluctantly, both Lance and John did do what was requested of them and went in behind Emma, although they were both a little more than anxious about what awaited them within.

Once inside, the trio went down a very modern-looking staircase complete with bright fluorescent lighting on the ceiling above, also on the steel-tiled walls beside them that steadily descended downward, and lights that even shone up through the thin metal grates of each one of the steps underfoot. Upon reaching the bottom of the staircase they arrived in a corridor, which immediately looked very familiar to John.

It wasn't because this corridor had the same look as most of the other secret sub-level areas at the Massachusetts Academy, areas which served to create a virtual labyrinth beneath the school. It was because John quickly realized that, except for it being shorter and having a few minor scale and design variations, this area looked almost exactly like the sub-level corridor that he had seen beneath Xavier's School for the Gifted when he was a student back in Westchester. More specifically, this area looked just like the entryway that led to Professor Xavier's Cerebro machine below his school, which he, Bobby, and Rogue had snuck down to get a quick peak at from its exterior one day, at a time when the Professor and most of the other teachers happened to be away from the school.

As John and Lance continued to trail a few steps behind Emma, they all stopped when they came to two large steel doors that stood at the end of the corridor. There, after a brief verification process by its security system to identify the Headmistress of the school, the doors opened up and granted them access into a large, spherical-shaped chamber within. The chamber appeared to have been constructed entirely from an advanced metallic-material, and it had a long, thin platform aisle that jutted out almost all of the way out from the entrance into the room's center.

"This is some relaxation room you built for yourself down here." Lance humorously commented, as he and John came into this Cerebro-chamber behind Emma, which had been built far below her private residence, and which neither student was previously aware even existed.

"I don't recall granting you permission to talk!" Emma angrily shouted in response to Lance, as she was still upset at the both of them.

Emma went to the end of the platform and sat down in front of the Cerebro machine's control-panel there. After removing her glasses, Emma reached up to put on the device's interface helmet, all while the huge entrance doors to the chamber now closed behind them.

As the Cerebro machine began to flash to life, John and Lance just looked at one another when millions of astral projections, which represented every sentient mind on the planet, unexpectedly started blowing past and all around them. In the meantime, now that Emma was telepathically linked into her Cerebro, she began her psi-scan for Firestar's location in earnest, using the device to try and lock onto the young mutant's very unique thought-patterns.

In less than a minute, the astral projections all around John and Lance abruptly disappeared, and Emma stood back up from her seat in front of Cerebro's controls at the end of the platform.

"Firestar is currently flying towards New York City. Since you have helped to create this little situation, then I will give you the opportunity to correct it. You two will be the ones responsible for bringing her back, and you can even take that worthless-lump Dukes along to help assist you." Emma said, as she had turned back around from the Cerebro control panel and was looking at both John and Lance.

"New York's a huge place, how are we gonna find one person in a city full of millions?" Lance queried his Headmistress, after receiving the mandate from her.

"Take this." Emma now said, as she turned around to pick up a small electronic device from the large control panel behind her.

"What's that?" John now asked her, as Emma walked back towards them with something in her hand that looked like a PDA or PSP to them.

"It's a portable Cerebro device, which is currently attuned to Firestar's unique mutant bio-signature." Emma replied, as she handed the device over to John.

Emma Frost possessed a very acute and advanced understanding of computers and other electronic components, which had helped her to build her company Frost Technotics into one of the chief innovators in its field. Emma's skill and expertise had also allowed her to replicate, and then fully reconstruct this completely-functional Cerebro machine, which now stood underneath her school. And it had made it possible for her to build a smaller, portable version of the mutant locating device, which she was now handing to one of her students.

As they were preparing to head out of the chamber, John and Lance paused and then turned back around to ask their teacher one more question.

"What if Firestar decides to put up a fight when we do find her?" Lance now asked his Headmistress.

"I believe your combined abilities sufficient to allow the three of you to easily subdue one junior-level student, should she attempt to use her own powers and resist." Emma replied, as she had basically granted them permission to use their mutant powers against Firestar, if need be.

"Even if we do bring her back, what's to guarantee that she won't just run away again?" John inquired, as he glanced down briefly at the portable Cerebro in his grasp, which was beeping with a tracking dot triangulating Angelica's current position.

"Trust me, when I've finished with Firestar she will unequivocally understand where she belongs. And any further thoughts of running away from this school will never cross her mind again!" Emma emphatically replied, as she once again began to yell at John and Lance, with an expression relaying that she meant every word that she had said and displayed a level of rage rarely seen from her, "Now, quit standing here wasting time with me, and go find her. And for both of your sakes, you'd better not fail me!"

With that Pyro and Avalanche turned back and tore out of the Cerebro chamber to prepare for their departure, leaving a somewhat satisfied Emma Frost in there. Emma couldn't help but smile a little, as she marveled at just how valuable a tool fear can be, especially when being employed to motivate others.

**…………………………………………………**

Bobby Drake was making fairly good time, as he drove into New York City this night in one of the cars from the school, a sporty Dodge SRT4. Bobby easily navigated the congested traffic once inside of the city's limits, as he gradually made his way towards Midtown and to the rendezvous point that he and Angelica had agreed upon earlier when she had called him.

Having had to park more than a block away from the small, family-owned pizzeria where Angelica said that she'd meet him, Bobby now walked up the sidewalk of the street on this crisp fall night and soon saw the restaurant's flashing neon-sign not too far up ahead. Upon entering Marcello's Pizzeria, Bobby scanned the two rows of table-booths within the restaurant, which were separated by a thin aisle in between them, and almost immediately his eyes locked onto a very familiar looking red-head sitting towards the back of the establishment.

Bobby couldn't help but stop in his tracks for a moment when he looked at Angelica, when he really looked at her sitting there, and for the first time realized just how beautiful this curvaceously-built girl truly was. Angelica was seated in a booth all by herself and appeared to be lost in deep her train of thought, as she introspectively stared out of one of the windows right next to her.

"This seat taken?" Bobby remarked to Angelica, as he came up to the table and broke her attention away from the window, having managed to approach her without her even noticing his entrance into the pizzeria.

"Nope, reserved all for you." Angelica replied, as she looked up and flashed Bobby a very cheery smile, looking nothing like the frantically upset girl that he had expected to find here following their previous conversation on the phone.

As Bobby sat down in the booth with her, Angelica now took notice of the varsity bomber jacket that he had on, which was in a medium blue/dark blue color combination, and how those colors seemed to accentuate his engaging ice-blue eyes.

"You sounded pretty worked up earlier on the phone. But, I guess you'd have to be, to run away from school and head all the way back here?" Bobby now said, as he jumped right to the subject of why he had driven down there to meet Angelica, who didn't seem the type to just take off like this.

Unless, there was a good reason.

"You'd be worked up too, if you found out what I did." Angelica replied, as she put her left hand over onto the small bag sitting on the bench seated next to her.

"Like what?" Bobby asked her.

Angelica now sat there and prepared herself to tell Bobby the unbelievable things that she had learned back at her school, and for some reason which Angelica couldn't fully explain yet, she felt very comfortable in talking to Bobby and that she could probably talk to him about almost anything.

"I found out Miss Frost's been using me and lying to me. Her school and some of the students there are actually part of the Brotherhood of Mutants, that terrorist group they talk about on TV, and she plans on making me join them to become some kinda mutant-terrorist too." Angelica told Bobby, which was why she had run away from her school and had was originally heading back home to West Morris, New Jersey, when she made a hasty detour in New York City when she figured that her home would be the first place that Miss Frost would come looking for her.

"You're…just now finding that out?" Bobby questioned her, as he sat back into his seat a little.

"It's not like it was on the brochure when I was recruited for the Massachusetts Academy. Plus, I think Miss Frost did something to my mi…wait a minute, you sure don't sound surprised by any of this?" Angelica now questioned Bobby, as she had been expecting a thoroughly shocked reaction from him, but noticed that he looked puzzled more than anything.

"Well, I hadn't brought it up before because I thought you knew, and I just assumed you were fine with the things going on there. But, I found out about the Brotherhood being at your school not too long after me, Kitty, and the Professor visited the Massachusetts Academy a few months ago." Bobby revealed to her, as he had assumed that all of the students at the Massachusetts Academy, like all of the students at Xavier's, knew what was going on behind the scenes at their respective schools.

"**How on Earth could you think that I'd be fine with something like that**!" Angelica now asked Bobby in a very resentful tone, as she once again became emotional and her voice rose in volume rather significantly. And as a result of her heightened emotional state, Angelica's mutant powers unconsciously activated, causing her body to emit a small amount of microwave energy, which made steam suddenly begin to rise off of the soda currently right next to her hand on top of the table, "Tell me, how did you find out exactly!"

"I hate to break it to you like this, but we knew because some of the students at our school, me included, are a part of--" Bobby was saying, when without warning he was abruptly interrupted.

It wasn't an interruption brought about by a waitress or someone else coming up to speak to him and Angelica, rather it was thanks to the sensation of the ground trembling beneath them. It felt as if they were experiencing the preliminary vibrations of an earthquake, despite the fact that this was New York state and not California.

"Oh no…**OH NO**!" Angelica now shouted, as she felt the tremors as well, "C'mon Bobby, we can finish talking later, but right now we need to get out of here."

Angelica forcefully jerked Bobby up from the table by his hand and they, along with the other frightened patrons in the pizzeria made a mad dash for the exit. Once outside, they came face-to-face with the cause of the mini-earthquake, as that person was standing in front of the pizzeria alongside two other distinctive individuals close to him, having just left his own very unique calling card.

"You were right about us gettin' suited up when Cerebro detected that other mutant around here, since it looks like losers really do like to travel in pairs." Avalanche now said and smiled, as he stood on the roof of a Grand Marquis parked on the street close to the restaurant.

"Miss Frost sent us to come get you." Pyro said, as he was standing in the middle of the street in front of the restaurant, now decked out in his reddish-orange and black-trimmed Brotherhood uniform.

Avalanche, who was currently standing on top of a parked car close to Pyro with his muscular arms folded over in front him, was wearing his own black and red-trimmed leather outfit, complete with a silver helmet that had two small eyeholes in it, while the helmet managed to mask most of his face. Meanwhile, Pyro was standing in the middle of this usually busy Manhattan street, which would have normally resulted in him being hit by a passing car, but there was little chance of that happening at the moment.

Both ends of the street were completely blocked off, courtesy of Avalanche's seismic tidal wave that had rolled through it. His devastating mutant power had managed to rip up much of the street's pavement and surrounding sidewalks, had busted a few fire-hydrants, wound up splitting and exposing a couple of the street's underground water manes and power cables, and had even overturned a few parked cars on the street as well.

"Just c'mon and make things easy on yourself." The Blob said to Angelica, as he also stood on the street dressed in a black tank-top with a yellow stripe running across it, along with a pair of black loose-fitting shorts that stopped just above his knees.

"I'm not going back Mr. Dukes, so I can become some kinda criminal like you!" Angelica ardently and vehemently responded, as she recognized the school's maintenance man sans his disguise. She and Bobby were standing on the sidewalk right outside of the restaurant, while most of the other patrons and bystanders attempted to vacate the immediate vicinity.

"Aggnnnnh, wrong answer." Avalanche now said to Angelica.

"Plus, I don't remember us givin' you a choice in the matter, 'Sweet-cheeks'." The massively rotund mutant who went by the accurately descriptive moniker of The Blob remarked to her as well, pulling a toothpick out of his mouth as he stood on the street right next to the parked car that Avalanche was atop of.

"Well, she does have a choice, and she just decided she's not going anywhere with you." Bobby now reiterated for her.

"Hold up, Ice-Prick. We don't come down to Westchester tellin' you dorks how to handle things there. So you'd better back your ass up, before you get it seriously kicked by me for stickin' your nose in Brotherhood business!" Avalanche now said, as he jumped down from the roof of the Grand Marquis and positioned himself on top of its hood.

"I'm not afraid of you, Avalanche. And she's made her decision, end of discussion." Bobby staunchly replied, as he showed that Avalanche's boisterous scare-tactics had little to no effect on him.

"Naw, it's just the beginnin', kid. And it looks like you're wantin' us to do this the hard way then." Blob said, as a smile came to his face and he flicked his toothpick off to the side.

"You've got that right, and you'll have to go through me first." Bobby replied, as he went and put his right-arm back behind his body and nudged Angelica over until she was standing directly behind him.

"That's fine with me." Avalanche replied, as an even larger smirk came to his face, which was the only part of his features that could be seen thanks to his helmet, "I've been wantin' an excuse to bomb on your ass like… well, like an Avalanche, and it'll make up for me not takin' you apart back at the Hellfire Club."

Those individuals still brave enough to be out on the street with these super-powered individuals now felt a second, and this time a sizable tremor, which made the ground start to quiver and set off any car alarms that weren't already blaring in the nighttime air. Now, Avalanche was readying himself, as he prepared to launch another one of his powerful seismic energy-blasts right in Bobby and Angelica's direction.

"Hold up, 'lanche." Pyro now said, as he came over and halted his teammates attack. Pyro then pulled his orange-tinted goggles off, placing them up above his face before taking a few steps towards Bobby and Angelica, "Look bro, I didn't come here to fight you. So, I think you'd better back up before someone ends up gettin' hurt."

"I don't want to fight you either. But, there're times when you've just gotta stand up for what you believe is right." Bobby replied, as he and John now stood and looked at one another for what felt like an eternity to them.

Even though Iceman and Pyro had teamed up recently as allies, when the combined efforts of SHIELD, the X-Men, and Magneto's new Brotherhood had worked together to defeat Mastermold and its army of Sentinels, both Bobby and John had known in the back of their minds that the day might come when they would no longer be united under a common cause, and might have to face one another in battle. They also knew full well that the conflicting ideals, which had divided Professor Xavier and Magneto in their younger days, might also end up testing their friendship up to and beyond the breaking point, just as it had done in each of their mentors' case.

"Yeah, I guess you're right. Sometimes, you just gotta do what you gotta do." John replied, as he pulled his goggles back down on his face, before turning and walking away from the individual who had been one of his closest, if not his best-friend.

But, after taking no more than two or three steps, Pyro swiftly spun back around and used the flamethrowers attached to each of his wrists to shoot a single stream of fire towards Bobby, engulfing the sidewalk and part of the pizzeria that stood behind them in flames.

Pyro's violent response displayed the unfortunate realization that it seemed the day, which both young men had been dreading, was now upon them.

But thankfully, Bobby's quick reflexes allowed him to react fast enough to throw up an ice barricade, which shielded both him and Angelica from Pyro's flame burst. Still, it wasn't enough to prevent Marcello's Pizzeria, which had been a family-owned business that had stood in this neighborhood for decades, from catching on fire behind them.

"**It's about time Johnny**!" Avalanche gleefully cackled, as he now jumped down from the car's hood onto the street and walked over to Pyro, "Let's go beat this loser down. And when we get through wailin' on him, maybe he'll learn to mind his own business from now on."

"Angelica, get out of here as far from here as you can. I'll try and buy you some time." Bobby said to her, as he used his ice-powers to repel the flame and intense heat surrounding them as a result of Pyro's attack.

But, Angelica just stood there in shock for a moment, as she had never seen Bobby use his mutant powers before. Then she watched, and was even more amazed, when Bobby began to cover his entire body in ice, and literally become an 'Iceman' before her very eyes. Iceman then further used his powers to create a slide underneath him, which was also made entirely out of ice, and which carried him over to where the three members of the Brotherhood were laying in wait for him.

While Iceman was perhaps one of the most skilled amongst the X-Men's senior-level students in mastery and control over his powers, the fact of the matter was that he was about to go up against three individuals, all of whom were just as equally skilled in the use of their own mutant abilities as he was, and it seemed to be a situation that very few would have come out victorious in all on their own.

As Iceman used his ice-slide to quickly navigate around and through Avalanche, Pyro, and Blob by weaving circles above and around them, doing so in an attempt to draw their attention away from Angelica long enough for her to make a hasty escape, Avalanche quickly caught on to this tactic. Avalanche astutely waited until Iceman was ascending up above them, before unleashing a well-timed seismic blast to shatter Iceman's ice-slide right from underneath him. This caused Iceman to fall from a height of about ten to twenty feet above them, although he was able to break his fall by quickly thinking and creating an ice-pole underneath him, using it to slide down to the street pavement below like a fireman.

But not to be outdone, the advanced targeting system built into Pyro's goggles now locked onto Iceman, and he proceeded to use a number of concentrated fire-bursts from his flamethrowers to simultaneously melt Iceman's ice-pole at its bottom, while also landing a direct hit against Iceman himself and knocking him down hard to the cracked street pavement below.

"That was easy." Avalanche confidently said, as he, Pyro, and Blob victoriously walked over to a now unconscious Iceman lying on the ground, whose ice-covered body had managed to provide a modicum of protection from the intense heat of the Pyro's flames, which had just struck him down.

"And this'll be even easier." Blob now said, as he used his inordinate strength to pick up a lamppost in his bulbous fingers, which had been knocked down to the street by Avalanche's earlier earthquake vibrations, and carried it over with him as he looked at his two young partners with a mocking smile, "Crushed-ice, anyone?"

As the Blob raised the light-pole up above his head and prepared to put Iceman down permanently, Angelica watched all of this taking place from the sidewalk close by. She was stunned by what she had just seen occur, and Angelica felt entirely helpless to do anything to put a stop to it.

Then, almost miraculously, all three members of the Brotherhood were unexpectedly stopped right in their tracks, although it certainly wasn't by their choice.

"Huh…**WHAT IS THIS SHIT**!" Avalanche started shouting, as he felt the sudden and strange sensation of himself being tied up and restrained.

Avalanche struggled to break free from these thin, web-like restraints being skillfully wrapped around his upper torso, but it was to no avail. Avalanche then looked over to see that his two cohorts' were also being wrapped up in the same sticky and stringy substance that he was.

"Hey, watch the mouth pal, else I'll have to take you somewhere and wash it out with soap."

Everyone still out on the street heard this statement, as a voice now spoke to them from over on top of one of the buildings on the street, just as another small stream of this webbing substance rapidly shot down to cover Avalanche's 'colorful' mouth, effectively gagging him for the time being at least.

"Well, I'll be hog-tied. Looks like we got ourselves a real, bona fide celebrity that dun gone and showed up here with us." Blob said, having been forced to drop the lamppost after being tied up there on the street.

Now, he and everyone else on the street looked up above, as a lone figure dressed in a red and blue spandex outfit seemingly leapt the entire length across street from the top of the first building and landed over on the wall of another right in front of them, before announcing his presence in his own trademark fashion.

"Awww, you're makin' me blush with all the flattery you're throwing at me, not that you'd be able to tell it. But, it's just your friendly, neighborhood Spiderman here at your service, and to help even up these lop-sided odds too." Was his response, as Pyro, Avalanche, Blob, Angelica and the other remaining bystanders looked up to see the one and only Spiderman crawling down the wall of the small antique shop next to the pizzeria, stopping halfway to sort of sit leaning back up against the side of the building in a semi-crouching position, as he peered at all of them through eyes concealed by his red and black spider mask.

While the familiar tingling sensation, which from experience told Spiderman that this was going to be another one of those nights of him going up against yet another super-powered foe, or foes in this particular case, what he didn't realize was that this confrontation was actually the culmination of a tragedy of sorts, as a friendship was about to be irreparably redefined forever.

**………………………………………………**

Next Chapter: **An epic showdown, with the Brotherhood squaring off against Spiderman and his Amazing new Friends**…

A/N: Special thanks to everyone who reviewed the last chapter of the New Mutants-

**Doza**- Glad I could evoke some Timbuk-3 flashbacks in you, and I'm really happy that you're looking forward to the upcoming stories. I have a number of different ideas involving possible appearances by various Marvel characters in future fics, but I'm not entirely concrete on which ones and how just yet. But, the X-23 idea is a nice one, so I might just take that one under consideration…

**Independent Fire**- Glad you liked the fairly suggestive tone of the last chapter of the New Mutants, what with Emma trying to get closer to Scott, and Roulette and Lance getting a whole lot more than just closer. And as you can see in this fic, you'll be getting a nice, healthy dose of Bobby and Angelica, and just how cute they can be when they're together.

Of course, when they're not fighting for their lives.

**TheDreamerLady**- It's cool, I just hope you're feeling better now.


	2. And Along Came A Spider

Coldfire 

Written by Darkstorm5000

Disclaimer: The X-Men and related characters in their various incarnations are the property of Marvel Comics and Marvel Enterprises.

…………………………………………

Part 2- And Along Came A Spider…

A/N: This story takes place after Spider-Man 2.

Just blocks away from Times Square sits _Dimitri's_, a quaint but very cozy dining establishment in the heart of New York City. And while Dimitri's could be described as modestly-upscale, it was still not the kind of place that one would expect to find a man, who is both owner and editor-in-chief of his own newspaper, to frequent on a more than consistent basis. Then again, you could also say the man himself was also unlike any other.

"Waiter…**Waiter**!" An acrimoniously scathing voice now bellowed, which could be heard throughout the entire restaurant by all of its other patrons

"Yeesss Mr. Jameson, is there a problem?" The individual assigned for the evening to one of Dimitri's VIP tables slowly articulated, as he came over dressed in a black waiter's tuxedo, complete with black bow-tie, linen napkin across his forearm, and a snooty attitude to boot.

"You'd better believe there's a problem! Me and my wife came here for a quiet evening, not to sit here and listen to some demolition crew go to work! **Just what the devil's going on outside**!" J. Jonah Jameson, the owner of the Daily Bugle seethingly replied, as he sat across from his wife at their table in the restaurant, and was dressed in his customary starched and pressed 3-piece suit. JJ Jameson was referring to the numerous seismic reverberations that he, and the rest of the patrons in the restaurant, had felt pass through the floor beneath them.

"Apparently, a small group of angry mutants have gathered a few blocks up from us, and are now engaged in some sort of street fight with Spider-Man." The waiter revealed, as he repeated to his customers what he had heard from a curious cook in the back, who had briefly slipped out of the restaurant's back door to go investigate the cause of the commotion.

"Spider-Man…hmmph! Well, I say it's well-past time that someone went and taught that wall-crawling menace a lesson." Jameson grumbled in response, as he looked back down at the menu in his hands and continued reading through it, in spite of the fact that he always ordered the _steak frites_, or steak and French fries, every time he dined at Dimitri's.

**……………………………………………**

Meanwhile, blocks up from that very restaurant…

A desperate confrontation was now about to erupt, as Spider-Man, Iceman, and Firestar were preparing to take on three powerful members of the infamous Brotherhood of Mutants. And, it would be the first super-powered conflict that the city had seen in a number of months, not since the Fantastic Four fought and successfully stopped the fiendish villain known as the Mole Man and his army of subterranean creatures. But, while preventing them from taking over New York City, the FF4 had inadvertently wound up turning much of midtown-Manhattan into a war-zone in the process.

"…just your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man at your service, and here to help even up these lop-sided odds too."

"Well boys, looks like we got ourselves a major fight on our hands." The Blob said to Pyro and Avalanche, as he used his massive, mutant-controlled girth to quickly and easily break free from the webbing that Spider-Man had used to ensnare him and his Brotherhood teammates with, "Not that I mind, 'cause Frederick J. Dukes loves to throw-down with the best of 'em."

The Blob then walked over across the street, first to where Avalanche was standing and proceeded to rip away the thinly-latticed strands that had been used to gag and bind the one-man seismic generator, before then going over to free Pyro as well. Meanwhile, Angelica had dropped her bookbag down onto the sidewalk before worriedly rushing over to Iceman's side, as he lay on the ground after being felled by the Brotherhood's combined efforts, and was just now beginning to regain consciousness.

"Wow. Spider-Man." Avalanche said in a very unimpressed toned, as the Blob now stood over by Pyro on the deserted street, "Don't get pissed or anything if I'm not all shook up over meetin' you, but I guess that's more my department anyways."

With those words, a just cut-loosed Avalanche unhesitatingly launched into another one of his seismic-charged attacks, this time aiming his energy blast directly at Spider-Man, who was clinging to a storefront wall close to them on the street. Upon impact, the store's wall immediately crumbled and most of its windows shattered under the sheer ferocity of Avalanche's vibratory discharge. Spider-Man easily dodged the blast by using his web shooter to swing over to a still standing lamp-post, which luckily had managed to survive Avalanche's earlier handiwork.

"So, as the adult in charge here, don't you think you should be teaching these two knuckleheads something about respecting private and public property?" Spider-Man now quipped about Pyro and Avalanche to the Blob, as he hung upside down and lowered himself closer to the street by a long, thick strand of his webbing from that nearby lamp-post on the street.

"Oh, I'm gonna teach 'em somethin' alright. I'm gonna teach 'em that to get rid of a major pest problem, you gotta squash the king bug!" The Blob replied, as he went over and used his freakish strength to pick up an overturned car on the street, which by now was empty of any bystanders, and hoisted the vehicle above his head before he sent it sailing through the air at Spider-Man.

"Now, that was just plain rude." Spider-Man humorously responded, as his own superhuman strength levels allowed him to somersault down from his hanging position on the lamp post and effortlessly catch the car in mid-air, before setting it back down onto the damaged street pavement.

"No, I'll show you rude, when I leave you burnt to the bone!" Pyro now chimed in, as he used the flamethrowers attached to each of his wrists to fire off a scorching attack of his own, and try to catch Spider-Man off-guard.

"Hate to break it to you 'Sparky', but appearances to the contrary, you're not the one who lights my fire." Spider-Man replied, as he agilely avoided the fire-blasts that had been aimed at him by jumping to his side, and then up onto the wall of an apartment building on the opposite side of the street.

In the same fluid motion, Spider-Man used his web-shooters to latch onto nearby fire-hydrant and forcefully turn it in a new direction. Spider-Man carefully aimed the valve, before he yanked the hydrant's plug off with his webbing. The resulting deluge that shot out drenched both Pyro and Avalanche in a fast-moving stream of water, knocking both of them to the ground as it washed them down the street and temporarily out of the fight. But, the Blob's mutant ability to root himself to whatever ground was directly underneath him made him virtually unmovable, and the jet-force of the water stream had essentially no effect on him.

"You'd better get out of here now, because I have a feeling that things're really about to get messy." Iceman groggily said to Angelica, as he had recovered just enough that he was now able to stand up. Iceman at once saw that Spider-Man had joined them and immediately realized that his observation was a bit of an understatement, as their situation appeared to have already escalated into full-fledged rumble status.

"**No Way**! I'm the reason all of this is happening, and I'm not going anywhere until I've helped you stop those guys." Angelica insistently replied, as she looked up at Bobby while tightly holding onto his arm, making sure that he didn't lose his balance and fall back down.

Angelica was one of the few people on Earth that, thanks to her own mutant abilities, could touch Bobby's ice-covered body with her bare hands and not be physically affected by its sub-zero effect. But, Angelica was actually having more trouble with the fact that John and Lance, two of the people that she had lived and gone to the same school with, were now helping to incite all of this chaos and destruction and something inside of her just wouldn't let her walk away from this scene.

"You sure you wanna do this?" Iceman now asked her, as the ice-covered teen stood and looked down into Angelica's captivating green eyes. He wanted Angelica to carefully consider what she was about to get into, given how far the Brotherhood had shown them that they were willing to go by already causing such a concentrated amount of damage to this city block.

"I've never been more sure about anything." Angelica smirked, as she gazed up into his icy features and confidently replied, "Plus, I've trained against Pyro and Avalanche in our Combat Room back at school, so I have a good idea how they'll think in a fight."

With that, Angelica's entire body began to glow as it became enveloped in a brightly-illuminated field of microwave energy. Firestar wanted to make it crystal clear to Bobby that she was serious, and that she was also very much able to back up her words with action.

"Okay, you take Avalanche, and I'll deal with Pyro." Iceman told Firestar, as they gazed at one another for a moment, before turning to head over to Pyro and Avalanche, who themselves were just now getting back up onto their feet after being washed-out by Spider-Man.

Meanwhile, after hosing down Pyro and Avalanche, Spider-Man had been left up the street with the Blob as his lone adversary.

"You know, normally I'd make some kinda crack about Jenny Craig and how she hasn't been returning any of your phone calls, but I thought that might still be a sore spot for you." Spider-Man verbally jabbed at the Blob, as he stood close by and got into a stance that readied him for whatever the Blob intended to throw at him next.

"**Hah**! That's a good one. But, the only sore spot around here is gonna be your neck, when I detach your bug-eyed face from it you wall-crawlin' sonuvabitch!" Blob smiled and genuinely laughed in response, as he went over and snapped up a sign-post from its concrete mooring right next to the street curb, "And since I don't have a giant rolled-up newspaper handy to squash you with, this'll just have to do."

This time, the Blob wanted to make sure that he had a weapon that was far more maneuverable than the much larger metal light-pole that he had previously, which he had picked up and had then dropped when Spider-Man initially arrived. But, instead of sitting and waiting to be the one on the receiving end of the Blob's next attack, Spider-Man decided to be the one to go on the offensive first.

Using his lightning-quick reflexes, Spider-Man ran and catapulted himself up into the air, using his web-shooters to latch onto a nearby apartment building. Swinging through the air right over the Blob, Spiderman then used his webbing to grab onto the fire escape over on the side of this brown-bricked building. He then circled back around in mid-air to deliver a powerful, double-footed jump kick maneuver against the Blob. Which, Spider-Man thought would be enough to take his over-sized foe off of his feet, before the Blob could get an opportunity to counter. But, being unaware of the specific details of how the Blob's mutant powers actually worked, Spider-Man instead found himself in a bad situation, as both of his feet were now left lodged in the nearly six and a half-foot tall Blob's bulbous upper-torso.

"Ummm, yeah. Hope you didn't take what I said earlier about, what I'm sure has to be a glandular-condition, personally." Spider-Man now amusingly said, as he was left in a semi-horizontal position with both of his legs entrenched in the side of the Blob's abdominal region.

"Nah, with me it's always business and never personal." Blob nodded his head and lightly chuckled with Spider-Man, as he still held the sign-post in one hand and raised his other enormous one above his head.

The next thing that Spider-Man felt was a thunderous shot from the Blob's right hand across his chest, as the larger man's surprisingly fast reflexes delivered a devastating backhand that slapped Spider-Man away from him. The red-and-blue clad hero shot through the air like a bullet and was sent clear back across the street, where his entire body slammed very harshly into the side of an apartment building. It was the same one that Spider-Man had just been swinging from, and as a result of the tremendous force that he flew into it with, part of the building's exterior wall collapsed down on top of him.

**………………………………………**

At that same moment down the street, while Spider-Man was in the middle of sharing a very short communion with a very tall brick-wall…

"You're good, but you're way out of your league tryin' to hang with me Bobby." Pyro said, as he stood in the middle of the street and ignited volley, upon powerful volley, of incendiary blasts from his flame-thrower and directed them at Iceman.

"It looks like I'm doing just fine so far." Iceman mockingly replied, as he countered Pyro's attack by using his own remarkable mutant powers to project icy-cold blasts from his hands, neutralizing Pyro's fire-balls in mid-air as their elemental duel carried on.

"Yeah, but you can't keep that up forever. And, your stupid ice-sculptures won't do you any good when I decide to really get serious." Pyro sneered and remarked, as he stopped shooting fire-balls at Iceman, and instead ignited a large stream of flames from his mechanized throwers.

Pyro then used his pyro-kinetic abilities to reshape this steady source of fire into the shape of a fist, and with breath-taking effect, sent his fire-fist the entire distance of the street between him and Iceman. Manipulating fire with his pyro-kinetic powers gave whatever creations that Pyro could conjure up a certain degree of solid tangibility. Which Iceman was now given a personal demonstration of, as the fire-fist punched him with what felt like the force of a semi-truck, and not even the ice-wall that he had thrown up as a protective barrier was able to stop it.

"Well, I'll let you see for yourself just what one of my stupid ice-sculptures can do." Iceman thought to himself, as he struggled back up to his feet after being knocked down hard to the ground, and once again activated his powers.

While Pyro stood on the street with a smug expression and in a semi-victorious pose, Iceman used his ice powers to quickly create a large object of his own. Forming right in front of him was a large fist made completely out of ice, which Iceman then sent hurling through the air towards Pyro at an alarming velocity.

Pyro aptly ducked down and took cover on the street, barely dodging the huge ice-fist as it flew by overhead. And almost immediately Pyro began to formulate a new plan of attack, which he intended to use to bring this showdown with his old friend to a swift and brutal conclusion.

"Fine, you think you can hang with the big boys, then get ready to get your shit stuffed!" Pyro angrily said, as he stood back up from the pavement and faced Iceman from further up the street.

Suddenly, a tremendous amount of fire began to surge from Pyro's flamethrowers, as he slowly closed his eyes. With intense and heavy concentration, Pyro rapidly reshaped these flames into his deadliest creation, his Pyro-kinetic Firebird. And Iceman was well aware of just how dangerous this creature could be, as he had been on hand a few months ago to witness Pyro use it to decimate an entire squad of giant robotic Sentinels.

Iceman realized that what he needed was to give himself some time, and some breathing room, to try and figure out how best to deal with such a harrowing creature. So, Iceman jumped onto the ice-slide that he formed underneath him, and he briskly took off with Pyro's huge firebird in close pursuit right behind him.

**………………………………………**

Elsewhere on the street, as Iceman slid up and down the block from high above in weaving and winding patterns to avoid the firebird, Firestar and Avalanche were in the midst of a confrontation that certainly wasn't lacking in drama of its own.

"You're just wastin' time, Frosty already said your ass is comin' back with us. One way or another, Wall-flower." Avalanche said to Firestar, as she used her mutant powers to levitate a few feet into the air above him and flew around in intertwining circles.

"I told you, I'm not going back with you." Firestar protested, as she continued to float overhead, "And I hate it when you call me that too!"

"Have it your way, Wall-flower." Avalanche laughed, as he continued to intentionally refer to Firestar by a nickname that he knew she despised, doing it if for no other reason than he seemed to take perverse pleasure in hurting Angelica's feelings, "All it means now is we get to lower the boom on you, your boyfriend, and on 'bug-brain' over there too."

Avalanche then launched into another one of his attacks, this time stomping his foot on the ground and angling the direction of his well-timed seismic surges to send numerous large chunks of the street's pavement exploding upwards at Firestar.

But, with the hours of training that she had received under the tutelage of Emma Frost in their Combat Room underneath the Massachusetts Academy, Firestar was more than capable of countering Avalanche's onslaught. Firestar easily destroyed each of the projectiles that Avalanche had directed at her, using the powerful microwave-energy beams that she fired out of her hands to accomplish the task.

"So, you wanna stay up there and play hard to get? Fine, you can hang around up there all night and watch me remodel this whole neighborhood!" Avalanche said with slight frustration in his tone, as Firestar continued to evade him by remaining aloft overhead.

"No, you won't!" Firestar replied, as she now came down from her aerial perch, and landed on the middle of the street in front of him.

Firestar could tell from the way that the area right around them was starting to shake and tremble violently, that Avalanche was gearing up to unleash a seismic tidal-wave of epic proportions, one that just might be powerful enough to wipe out the rest of this city block.

"Good goin' dumbass, you just did exactly what I wanted you to." Avalanche sneered and told Firestar, as she had unwittingly fallen for his ploy of threatening to destroy this neighborhood, and was now standing right in his line of fire.

Avalanche then discharged the seismic energy that he had been building up in his body, sending a ten-foot tall tidal-wave racing towards Firestar that swallowed up much of the remaining street pavement, a few cars, and most other items in its path.

Firestar's immediate, and really her only available response, was to brace herself and prepare to use her own formidable powers to attempt to block Avalanche's mutant tidal-wave phenomenon. As she began drawing a substantial amount of power from the Earth's electromagnetic field, Firestar's body started to burn almost incandescently like an earth-bound star. She then discharged that tremendous energy into a blast meant to halt Avalanche's tidal wave from devouring the rest of the block, and her along with it.

The result was a stand-off between the two, with both Avalanche and Firestar determined not to give an inch to the other. As they each increased the level of their power output, it seemed to be just a matter of time before one of them would be forced to cede in what had become an ultimate test of wills.

**……………………….…………….**

In the midst of all this discord and further up the block from Avalanche and Firestar, the Blob had come across the street and now stood mere yards from the partially demolished wall of the apartment building in front of him. The Blob proudly made a visual inspection of the area, taking note of the section of the wall where he had hurled Spider-Man into, and where the web-slinging hero had left a noticeable hole where he made impact. But beyond just admiring his own destructive handiwork, the Blob now intended to finish Spider-Man off for good, as evidenced by the sign-post that he was still holding in his right hand.

"**Whoo-wee**! If you'd done your homework, then you woulda known nothin' moves me once I plant myself to the ground. And, you wouldn't've had to learn the hard way that nothin' moves the Blob." The Blob contemptuously remarked, as he continued his slow approach to the side of the apartment building, stopping right at the curb when he saw Spider-Man beginning to stir and pick himself up from beneath the brick rubble out of the busted exterior wall.

"Thanks for the heads up, even if it is…uhhh, after the fact." Spider-Man replied, as he stood up rubbing the back of his head, and shook himself free of the remaining structural debris on him. Then, as he looked over at the Blob, Spider-Man did something that was totally unexpected by Mr. Dukes.

"That whack upside your head musta really scrambled your brains, 'Bugsy', 'cause you ain't even touched me." The Blob said to Spiderman, as he began to shooting off a vast amount of webbing, except that it wasn't hitting the Blob directly. Instead, Spider-Man weaved the net-like material from his wrists into a webbed circle on the ground, which began to completely surround his over-sized foe.

"Yeah, I know. You must think I'm blind or somethin', what with me missin' a svelte chap like yourself." Spider-Man sarcastically replied, as he looked down at the street and continued his work unabated, quickly finishing his webbed enclosure around the Blob.

Then without warning, Spider-Man began ripping up chunks of the street, curb, and sidewalk with his webbing. Working at a furious pace, Spider-Man then shot more webbing onto the exposed foundation around the Blob, and continued to pull up even larger sections of the foundation around him. After less than a minute, it soon became apparent what Spider-Man had done, and his exhaustive laboring was about to pay off in spades.

"You gotta know it's gonna take a lot more than this nest-buildin' display of yours to…" The Blob muttered, as he stood on a small section of pavement left in the center of the man-made crater, which Spider-Man had keenly dug around him, "Wait…what inna hell!

While the Blob had been boasting about how Spider-Man's excavation work had done little to harm him directly, he had failed to catch on to the fact that there was much more going on there than met the eye. The Blob now began to feel a strange sensation of the ground beneath him starting to tremble, even though he could see that Avalanche was otherwise occupied with Firestar down the street and had nothing to do with these tremors that he was currently experiencing.

In that same moment, Spider-Man used his web-shooters to swing up to the side of another nearby building, just as the foundation around the Blob suddenly collapsed in. The bulbous mutant fell down into a giant sinkhole in the street, plummeting downward like a huge stone falling to the bottom of a well. His predicament was all thanks to Spider-Man's efforts, which had made the paved area around the Blob very unstable. This, coupled with the Blob's mutant ability to manipulate his body's mass and greatly intensify the gravitational forces underneath him to turn himself into a virtually immovable object, simply left this small section of the street unable to support the tremendous amount of stress being placed upon it.

With the Blob having been dropped into the subterranean regions that ran far below New York City, Spider-Man was now free to turn his full attention towards the remaining two members of the Brotherhood, who were currently facing off against Iceman and Firestar down the street from him. But, just as his battle with the Blob had ended in a quick and decisive manner, Iceman and Firestar's individual showdowns were also about to end just as swiftly, and as just as definitively.

**…………………………………………**

Yards down the street and at a level that was high above it, even from Spider-Man's vantage point on top of another building up the street, Iceman was sliding and crisscrossing his way up and back down the block, all in an attempt to stay one step ahead of Pyro's monstrous firebird. Then suddenly, Iceman jumped off of his ice-slide in mid-air and somersaulted down towards the ground, only to create a second ice-slide underneath him halfway down. It then whisked him away in a new direction heading up the street away from Pyro and his firebird and towards Spider-Man. But, Pyro's mental control over his flame creation was such that he had absolutely no trouble in commanding his firebird to halt and change its trajectory as well, as it managed to keep in close pursuance behind Iceman.

"Alright, this is it." Iceman silently said to himself, as he abruptly hopped off his second ice-slide and landed on the damaged street pavement below.

Having decided that it was time to end his elusory tactics, Iceman now stood in the middle of the street and watched as Pyro's firebird barreled down the street towards him. Iceman closed his eyes and began to focus his concentration, preparing to unleash the most powerful ice-blast that he could generate in his counter-attack to Pyro's tactics.

And it worked, as Iceman produced an immense, arctic–level discharge from his hands. The supercharged ice-blast hit Pyro's firebird, instantly and completely freezing the combusting gases that it had been created from. Crystallized in mid-flight the firebird was, ironically enough, turned into nothing more than a giant ice-sculpture, as it dropped down like deadweight to the street below with a resounding thud.

"And score one for the guy who makes the stupid ice-sculptures!" Iceman smiled and tauntingly said to Pyro from up the street, as he stood slightly bent over with his icy hands pressed against the front of his ice-covered thighs, and tried to recover as quickly as possible from the tremendous effort that he had used to stop the firebird. Iceman was anticipating that he wouldn't have long before Pyro struck again with another of his pyro-kinetic assaults.

"You got lucky, but you can't keep this pace up forever against me. I can tell just by lookin' at you how much of a strain that last blast took outta you, and now I'm bettin' that your powers'll give out way before mine do." Pyro replied, as he ignited his flamethrower again and this time set to the task of creating a second, and even more powerful firebird, to send against his former best-friend.

Meanwhile, down the street from Pyro and Iceman as their tragic duel was in the middle of a brief intermission, Firestar and Avalanche were still in the midst of their own super-powered altercation. Firestar was using her own extraordinary mutant powers to block the destructive tidal wave that Avalanche had unleashed upon her from up the street, temporarily preventing it from burying her and the rest of this city block in it.

"Just give it up, Wall-flower. You're not gonna win." Avalanche warningly said to her, as he steadily increased the intensity of his rolling tidal wave, which had grown even taller in the last few minutes.

"No, I'm not giving up. And I'm through being pushed around by people like you!" Firestar replied, as she became angry at hearing Avalanche once again derisively refer to her as 'Wall-flower'.

Firestar thought to herself about how people like Lance, and like Cassie back at her old high-school, seemed to enjoy making miserable the lives of others whom they deemed to be weaker than them, those whom they thought were unable to fight back against them and were thus deserving of such treatment. But, as she saw Avalanche struggling to maintain his footing against the now exponentially increasing ferocity of her microwave energy beams, Firestar now knew that she was neither weaker than him, and no longer was she unable to fight back. And it was a realization that she intended to demonstrate for Avalanche, right here and right now.

Like dynamite being set off, the inner rage that Firestar felt caused her energy blast to surge in strength, increasing it to the point that she easily obliterated the man-made tidal wave of debris that Avalanche had been aimed at her. The thunderous boom that resulted from Firestar shattering the rolling earth-mound sent powerful shockwaves out, which were strong enough to shatter the windows in most of the houses and cars left on the street, and also managed to knock Avalanche himself down to the ground. Having his seismic energy-waves redirected back at him caused Avalanche a significant amount of physical anguish, and he was also hit with a heavy dose of psionic feedback from it. As he sat on the battered street pavement, Avalanche placed his hands up by the temple regions of his helmet in a display of just how agonizing the pain that he was experiencing was.

But, Firestar's mega-powered blast would have an unintended consequence, as her energy beam was so strong and focused that, after demolishing Avalanche's destructive wave of rolling asphalt and debris, it continued on past him unabated. Iceman was facing in the direction from up the street where Firestar and Avalanche had been fighting, and was able to see her radiating beam speeding towards him. But, Pyro's concentration was erstwhile occupied as he worked on creating another one of his firebirds, and he never saw what hit him.

**KRAK-BOOM!**

Was the horrific and ear-splitting sound that resonated up and down the street and could also be heard a number of blocks over, as Firestar's powerful energy beam squarely struck Pyro's fuel-tank on his back and ruptured it. Her blast succinctly caused the canisters strapped to Pyro's back to explode with the force of a small bomb being set off, and it threw him a few yards up the street towards Iceman. While Pyro's ability to control all manner of flame was without question, the explosion caught him off-guard and he had just enough left time to throw up a partial pyro-kinetic field to protect himself from the fury of the flames, which were now raging around him.

As Pyro was propelled up into the air by the detonating fuel pack, he just as quickly crashed back down onto the street pavement with such force that it knocked him unconscious. The blast was so violent and concentrated that it even managed to burn through the flame resistant material of Pyro's reddish-orange leather uniform, which hadn't been designed to provide protection against a direct hit from one of Firestar's massive heat beams. Pyro's uniform then began to smolder a little, as the eruption severely burned portions of his back and shoulders.

Without hesitation, Iceman rushed over to use his ice powers to try and smother Pyro's bubbling suit. This was all in spite of the fact that minutes before Pyro had been attempting to kill Iceman with his own fire-manipulating abilities. Were the roles reversed, Iceman was fairly sure that Pyro would have most likely left him to die in such a situation, since they were now first and foremost adversaries. But, if the differences in the ways in which their mutant powers manifested themselves wasn't already a good indicator then this act of coming to the aid of a friend, former or not, further displayed that Iceman and Pyro were polar opposites of one another. Iceman now began to carefully shower Pyro's entire body in a thick sheet of sleet-like ice, which would put out his singed uniform without completely freezing Pyro to the bone.

At that same moment, Avalanche was just beginning to regain his bearings and had now recovered enough to see that Firestar was no longer focusing her attention on him laying on the ground in front of her, and was instead looking up the street past him with a gravely concerned expression on her face. While she had wanted to stop Avalanche's destructive assault from destroying all of the homes, businesses, and other property on the block, Firestar certainly hadn't intended to injure Pyro in such a sobering and crippling manner. But, since Avalanche had been out of it while all of this was going on, all he saw was Pyro now laid out unconscious on the street, with Iceman standing over him and seemingly using his ice powers to finish his teammate off.

Avalanche then stood up and took off running up the street, using his seismic powers to create an earthquake tidal wave strong enough to knock Iceman off of his feet as he came up behind him. Avalanche then knelt down to pick up a still unconscious and ice-covered Pyro, easily slinging his fallen teammate over his own strong and fairly rounded shoulders. Avalanche then turned to face Iceman, who was currently sitting down on the ground as a result of his earthquake, and was looking up at him.

"You might've got round one, but this shit ain't over yet. Not by a long shot!" Avalanche ominously shouted, as he looked down at Iceman and glared at him through the eyeholes of his chrome-hued helmet.

Avalanche then took a page from Iceman's own book and created a tidal wave of asphalt and earth underneath him and Pyro, which they rode over to the sinkhole that Spider-Man had a few minutes prior dropped the Blob into. As he used the rolling mound of earth to cushion his and Pyro's descent into the subway tunnel system, which ran underneath much of Manhattan, Avalanche further used his powers to cave in the sinkhole behind them and seal off their escape.

"Later, losers!" Was the last thing Iceman heard from Avalanche, before the hole closed in behind him and Pyro.

But given what had just transpired, it was obvious as to who the losers were, as Spider-Man, Iceman, and Firestar were the ones who had wound up besting the Brotherhood on this night.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't…I didn't mean to hurt John like that." Firestar somewhat frantically said, as she ran up the street and stopped next to Iceman, who was standing beside the now sealed in sinkhole.

"I know, and don't worry about it. The Brotherhood put you, put us all, in a bad position." Iceman told her, as he saw how visibly upset she was and came over to comfortingly put his ice-covered arm around Firestar.

"Hey, you two. If you think you can keep up, then follow me." Spider-Man said to Iceman and Firestar, as he had swung close by overhead, and was now hanging upside down from another undamaged lamppost on the street, just as the blaring sound of police sirens from down at the other end of the street could also be heard.

Even though the police were currently having trouble entering the area, which was all thanks to Avalanche having earlier used his powers to block off both ends of the street with a ton of pavement and other assorted debris, it wouldn't be too much longer before this battle area would be filled with police officers and other officials coming in to survey the damage. And, Spider-Man knew from personal experience that trying to explain to them that the hefty amount of destruction, which had been caused by the three of them fighting an escaped felon and two juvenile delinquents, would most likely fall on deaf ears.

Iceman proceeded to use his powers to create another ice-slide underneath him as he took off behind Spider-Man, who was swinging his way out of the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Firestar quickly ran over to grab her book-bag lying on the sidewalk in front of the burnt out pizzeria, before using her own powers to take flight. Firestar then easily caught up to the other two, as she flew high above the city with them. The microwave aura surrounding Firestar gave her the appearance of a shooting-star streaking across the nighttime sky.

**………………………………………………**

On top of another building, which wasn't too far from the battle zone that they had just exited, Spider-Man, Bobby Drake, and Angelica Jones now found themselves standing together near the edge of its roof-top. From here they didn't necessarily have the best vantage point to look out onto the city, but the trio was still treated with a pretty good view of the Empire State building along with a good section of New York City's well-lit skyline. It was the main reason why Spider-Man would often came here, as he sought out a few brief moments of solitude.

"So, you guys do this often? I mean, get into fights in public?" Spider-Man now playfully asked Angelica and Bobby, as he sat in a semi-crouching position on the roof's edge and looked out across the city.

"This was my first time." Angelica honestly replied, as she stood slightly behind Spider-Man to his left.

"Well, at least I try not to make a habit out of it." Bobby smirked and teasingly remarked, as he stood behind Spider-Man to his right.

Bobby had just de-iced himself to reveal the long-sleeved, turquoise check button-up shirt and dark-indigo jeans that he had on, and his fairly sarcastic remark caused the masked hero to turn back around and look at him, while remaining perched on the roof's edge.

"Smart move. Wish I could find a way to follow your lead, though." Spider-Man said, as he had detected, and actually enjoyed, the tinge of humor in Bobby's response.

"But when you fight, it's just because you're trying to help save people." Angelica now asserted, as she sat her book-bag down onto the rooftop, which she had been carrying draped across the shoulder of her violet-red blouse.

"What made you decide to come down and give us a hand anyways?" Bobby now asked Spider-Man.

"I just happened to be swinging by, when the human milk-shake down there set off my spider-sense and I decided to come see what was up." Spider-Man explained to them, referring to the tremors that Avalanche had caused with his mutant abilities.

"Your…what?" Angelica slowly articulated, as she had no idea what Spider-Man was talking about.

"Forget you heard that, that information's actually a trademarked super-spider-secret." Spider-Man jokingly said in response to Angelica's inquiry, "Let's just say I have a special way of telling the good guys apart from the bad guys. And I wasn't getting any of the bad vibes from you two that those three clowns down there were throwing off at me. Plus, I recognized 'Tubby' from his mug-shot that had been sent out when he escaped from prison, and we saw again when he caused that riot at Madison Square Garden."

Then Spider-Man turned his attention from Angelica over to Bobby.

"And, I remembered you from that photo of you giving Captain America a free lift on that homemade, frozen fun-park ride of yours, back when the two of you were in Washington D.C. a few months ago."

With that Bobby just looked at Spider-Man for a moment, after hearing him reference Iceman's happenchance appearance alongside Captain America. It was when the two were captured on camera together during their fight to stop the Sentinels' attempted takeover of the country, and it was an image that had wound up being broadcast around the world minutes afterwards.

"You saw that?" Bobby now asked Spider-Man, as he folded his arms over in front of him.

"Yeah, I do read the papers. And, it's not just to see pictures of myself either." Spider-Man quipped in response.

"Wow, I didn't think you really had time for that." Bobby once again whimsically remarked.

"And…why would you think that?" Spider-Man now questioned him.

"Well, I figured between you spending most of your time fighting crime, and then having to go hibernate back in your Spider-Lair, that you'd--" Bobby was saying to him, when he was quickly interrupted.

"Wait just one web-shooting minute, who said anything about me hibernating in my Spider-Lair, or me even having a Spider-Lair for that matter?" Spider-Man now wanted to know, as he stood straight up on the edge of the rooftop.

"They say that's why you disappear some times, that you have to go somewhere to recharge your spider-powers." Angelica now revealed, to a fairly amazed and shocked Spider-Man.

"Look, I disappear because I do have a life outside of being Spider-Man. Underneath this mask, I'm just your average, normal guy. Sort of." Spider-man told them, "Where're the two of you getting all this crazy info from anyways?"

"Um, actually I read alot of it on the internet." Angelica explained to Spider-Man.

"Figures." Spider-Man now sighed and shook his head, not so much in disbelief, as it was that he knew that he should've been expecting that answer from the get-go.

"So, then you don't really look like a mutated spider underneath that mask?" Bobby now asked, as he wanted to confirm another one of the online rumors that he had heard regarding Spider-Man.

"That would be a no." Spider-Man slowly laughed in response, as he crouched back down onto the roof's edge, "Remember. Average guy. Doesn't live in a Spider-Lair, but in a low-rent apartment with his girlfriend. Although if anyone saw it, I could see how they'd mistake it for some kind of a dungeon."

"Wow, you have a girlfriend? I guess it's good we don't work for the Daily Bugle or anything, because we might actually have the story of the century with that tid-bit." Angelica now cheerfully added, showing both Bobby and Spider-Man that she was capable of competing with them in the humor department.

"Trust me, I think its good you don't work there either. And it's got nothing to do with keeping my love-life a secret." Spider-Man said as he continued his banter with the two teens, "So, now that you know the scoop on me, what's your story? You two get bitten by a radioactive iceberg and meteor or somethin'?"

"We're mutants, actually." Angelica now informed him.

"Well, that explains that. At least it's not something weird, I guess." Spider-Man replied.

"Not any more weird than a grown man, who hangs off the sides of buildings in his red-and-blue undies." Bobby sharply remarked.

"Oooh, toouuucch-ey." Spider-Man commented, as he sensed a small amount of defensiveness in Bobby's last response to what he had intended as another one of his harmless puns, "But I didn't mean anything by that, especially since I'm the last person in the world who should be calling anyone else weird."

"It's alright." Bobby replied, as he began to smile again, "You know, the other kids at my school are gonna flip when they find out I met you."

"Why's that?" Spider-Man now inquired.

"Look at you. A mutant, out in public and doing good deeds and protecting people. We all kinda look up to you for it." Bobby explained.

"You're like an inspiration to the rest of us. A real hero." Angelica added.

"I don't know how to break it to you, but I'm not a mutant, at least not in the traditional sense." Spider-Man told them, "I got my powers by a freak accident."

"So did we, only our accident happened to be when we were born." Bobby smartly replied.

"But, I guess it is nice knowing that all of you think so highly of me, despite what the papers sometimes say about me." Spider-Man now stated.

"We don't listen to that kinda stuff anyways." Angelica now took a step forward and told Spider-Man, "If you listened to everything they said, then you'd think every mutant on Earth was planning to take over the world."

"We know what it's like to have people say things about you, just so they can further their own agendas. When what went down tonight hits the news tomorrow, they'll probably say it's just one more example of teenagers with raging hormones and super-powers running around out of control. And, it'll be the same folks that'll say it's why they need to pass that Mutant Registration Act." Bobby imagined.

Spider-Man was suddenly struck by the realization that he might actually have a lot more in common with Iceman and Firestar than he had previously thought, outside of the fact that they all had super-human abilities. And, Spider-Man now understood that they also had perhaps just as great of an understanding as him, of what it was like to have the public mistrust you just because of what you are, an issue that he had been coming to grips with ever since the day that Peter Parker's life was changed forever by a single bite from a radioactive spider.

"Well, I think it's about time I swung out of here." Spider-Man now said to Bobby and Angelica, as he stood up from his crouching position on the roof's edge and aimed one of his hands out towards another nearby building, "But, tell the kids at your school that if I ever get a Spider-Cave built, you'll be the first to know."

"Okay." Bobby smiled and responded, as he shook his head and laughed a little.

"It was really nice meeting you Spider-Man. And, thanks for helping us." Angelica said, just as Spider-Man was about to leap off of the roof.

"You guys can call me Spidey." Spider-Man responded, as he looked back at Angelica over his shoulder, before he swung away, "I only let my friends call me that."

"Guess we'll be seeing you around then, Spidey." Angelica happily responded, as Spider-Man shot his webbing onto the face of the building adjacent to the one that they were on.

And with that, he was gone.

Now left behind on the rooftop were Bobby and Angelica, having experienced a night that they wouldn't soon forget.

"Oh, I saw this lying on the ground and I brought it up with me." Angelica now said to Bobby, as she knelt down and picked up her book-bag.

Inside of Angelica's book-bag was the rose-colored windbreaker that she had been wearing, right before the fight with the Brotherhood started. She then pulled out Bobby's blue bomber jacket, which he had also taken off when their fight first began, and that Angelica had hastily bundled up inside of her large backpack before taking off to follow him and Spider-Man through the air up to this rooftop.

"Thanks." Bobby said, as Angelica stood back up and handed him his jacket.

"Not that you need it or anything. I mean, it's not like you're going to actually get cold out here." Angelica smiled and humorously commented.

"No, I guess I won't." Bobby replied.

Then, a moment of uncomfortable silence entered the picture, as Angelica and Bobby both stood looking at one another and began to think about the next obvious question facing them.

"So, you really are 'that Iceman' I saw on TV a few months ago?" Angelica now inquired as she broke the silence, which was a thought that hadn't occurred to her before, at least not until Spider-Man mentioned it first.

"Yep." Bobby replied, as he confirmed for her that he was indeed the same person that she, and much of the world, had seen when the Sentinels' took the President of the United States hostage.

Then, this brief verbal exchange was now followed by another moment of silence between them, as Angelica went over to sit down on a short concrete wall that surrounded the rooftop's ventilation and cooling unit.

"God, what am I going to do?" Angelica suddenly and unexpectedly blurted out, as she dropped her book-bag back down onto the rooftop, and looked down at the small pebble stones underneath her feet.

"What do you mean?" Bobby curiously asked her, as he came over and sat down right next to her on the concrete barrier.

"What I mean, is how am I going to explain all of this to my Dad? I can see it now, 'Um, Dad, you know Miss Frost, the lady who showed up out of the blue and gave me a scholarship to attend her school? Well, I found out that she's been using her mutant powers to try 'n brainwash me, and tonight I ran away from her school because I also found out the school's actually a training camp for mutant criminals. And, then I got into this huge fight in New York against some of my classmates, and we tore up most of an entire neighborhood. So I wanted you to know, just in case the cops came by asking you a few questions about it.'" Angelica looked over at Bobby and told him, "He's either going to think I'm lying, or completely nuts. Or, maybe even both."

"You can come back to Westchester with me, Professor Xavier'll know what we should do." Bobby now suggested to Angelica.

And given that her other viable options at the moment were limited at best, Angelica sat and thought about it for a moment, before nodding her head in acceptance. The pair then used their mutant powers to slip back down from the roof, this time quietly making their way back over to the same neighborhood where they had fought against the Brotherhood less than an hour ago. Luckily, since Bobby had been forced to park his car a couple of blocks from the pizzeria earlier in the evening, he and Angelica had little trouble in attempting to reach it.

Around the immediate area on the street where the car was, there were no cops in sight. All available units were currently pre-occupied with trying to figure out just what in the world had happened a few blocks up from where Bobby and Angelica currently were, as this usually calm and peaceful neighborhood now resembled a war-zone. In no time, Bobby and Angelica were inside of the red Dodge SRT4 that he had driven from his school into Manhattan. And they were just as quickly back on I-87 heading north, now on their way back to Westchester County, New York.

**……………………………………..……..**

On the ride back, Angelica and Bobby continued the conversation that they had begun earlier, which had been interrupted back at the pizzeria. They now talked further, with Angelica telling Bobby about the fact that she was from nearby New Jersey, and with him telling her a little bit about his life growing up outside of Boston. But more importantly, Bobby finally revealed to her that the reason she had been seen him on TV with Captain America. He now informed her that it was because he was in reality a member of the mutant super-hero group the X-Men, and Bobby explained to Angelica how their goals differed vastly from those of other mutant groups and individuals, like Magneto and the Brotherhood for instance.

After a nearly hour drive, their red sports coupe pulled into the automobile garage located on the campus of Xavier's School for the Gifted. By now, it was well past midnight and all of the other students at the school were either asleep, or at least up in their rooms. All with the exception of Jones, whom Professor Xavier had given certain allowances to stay up past curfew, given the nature of how his mutant powers didn't allow him to sleep for very long.

But, as soon as Bobby and Angelica entered the front door of the mansion, Bobby received a telepathic message from his Headmaster, which he had no doubt been expecting upon his return.

"_Bobby, please come see me in my study immediately…"_ Professor Xavier mentally requested, as he always tried to maintain a constant, low-level telepathic resonance with his students, and was able to detect Bobby's presence as soon as he drove in through the huge iron gates at the front of the school.

"Just wait here. I need to go explain to the Professor where I've been, and what happened tonight. I'll be back in a second." Bobby hushingly told Angelica, as he continued on down the hallway to Professor Xavier's study, leaving Angelica in the corridor right outside of the living room where Jones was sitting and watching TV.

Upon entering his study Bobby saw Professor Xavier sitting behind his desk, dressed in one of his navy-colored herringbone suits with a blue and gray-striped tie. And, Bobby also noticed that Professor Xavier had his hands clasped together in front of him on top of the desk, as though he had been waiting in there for Bobby's return for some time now.

"You wanted to see me sir?" Bobby meekly asked, as he came into the study and pushed the door mostly closed behind him.

"Yes, I had actually expected to see you earlier when I returned. Preferably, watching the other students for me, as I had asked you." Professor Xavier admonishingly said to Bobby, although he was capable of doing it very calmly and effectively without having to even raise his voice.

"I'm sorry. It's just that something came up, an emergency that I had to go take care of." Bobby replied, as he went and sat down in one of the chairs right in front of the Professor's desk.

"And…what was so important that you had to leave the other students' unsupervised?" Professor Xavier further questioned him in an easy-going tone.

"It would be me."

Professor Xavier now looked up and Bobby turned around in his seat, as both men were greeted by the sight of Angelica standing just inside of the study's door.

"Don't be mad at Bobby, I'm the reason he left the school." Angelica tried to explain on Bobby's behalf, as she took a few steps further into the room.

Professor Xavier was very surprised to see Angelica here at his school, and was even more shocked that she had managed to enter the mansion without his low level psi-defenses alerting him to her presence. The Professor quickly realized that the psi-shields, which Emma Frost had obviously erected in the minds of her own students, were just as formidable as the ones that he had placed in his X-Men's.

"Miss Jones? You're quite some way from Snow Valley. Does Miss Frost know that you're here?" Professor Xavier asked her, as Angelica now stood right behind where Bobby was sitting.

"I don't care what she thinks, I'm never going back there! Especially, not after the way she turned the Brotherhood loose on us!" Angelica adamantly replied to the Professor, which brought a somewhat confused look to his face.

"We kinda got into a fight with Pyro, Avalanche, and the Blob in Manhattan, after Angelica refused to join them and left the Massachusetts Academy." Bobby explained to him.

"I see." Professor Xavier calmly replied, as he seemed to sit back a little in his wheelchair, before rolling it out from behind his desk and out to its side, "I think we can sort out all of the details in the morning. For now, I think that a full night's rest will do the both of you more good than anything. Bobby, would you please prepare the spare bed in Kitty's room for Angelica?"

"Sure." Bobby replied, as he stood up from his chair and turned back around to face Angelica.

As Bobby led Angelica out of the study with him, her backpack in tow with her, Professor Xavier sat in the same position next to his desk with his hands folded over in his lap. He then began to contemplatively think to himself, knowing full well what this confrontation with the Brotherhood tonight had ignited, and Professor Xavier dreaded the implications that it would hold for all involved on both sides.

Meanwhile, Bobby and Angelica were on their way back down the hallway, heading away from the study as they neared the other end of the mansion.

"Just wait right here, I'll be right back." Bobby told Angelica, as they stopped in the hallway in front of the student rec-room, "I'm just going to go grab some stuff from the laundry room, and then I'll show you up to Kitty's room."

"Okay." Angelica replied, as she turned and went into the rec-room, which seemed to remind her a little of the student recreation center back at the Massachusetts Academy, even if it was smaller.

Bobby continued on further down the hallway, cutting through kitchen until he was finally in the large laundry room on its other side. Gathering linen, blankets, and a pillow out of the linen storage area, Bobby took the items and then made his way back to the student rec-room. But, when he got back to the room, Bobby was met by a sight that he hadn't expected to find upon his return.

That of Angelica sitting in there, already fast asleep on the sofa in the rec-room.

But, one could hardly blame her, as Angelica had exerted a tremendous amount of energy when she flew the entire distance from Snow Valley to New York City, and had then physically pushed herself even further in their titanic showdown with the Brotherhood in Manhattan.

So instead of waking her, Bobby decided to go ahead and let Angelica continue to doze where she was. He first went over and took the backpack that was sitting beside Angelica, and placed it down on the floor next to the sofa. Then, he came back over and removed the white tennis shoes that Angelica had on, before placing her legs up onto the sofa in a proper sleeping position. Bobby then took the blanket that he had brought with him from the laundry room and spread it out over Angelica. Lastly, he carefully put a pillow underneath her resting head, gently re-positioning her long red hair and delicately pushing it aside from in front of her sleeping face in the process.

With Angelica now comfortably curled up on the sofa, Bobby then went over and took a seat in a living-room chair right next to her. He picked up the remote control to the TV in there and proceeded to surf the channels, curiously wanting to see if their fight had made any of the overnight news reports yet. But, as he flipped from one station to the next, Bobby didn't see anything talking about the disturbance.

Eventually a few hours later a report did come on, which only briefly mentioned a super-powered disturbance involving Spider-Man that evening in New York City.

But, Bobby didn't see it.

By the time it was finally broadcast on GNN, Bobby, like Angelica, had also fallen soundly asleep in the chair that he was seated in, and it was news that would simply have to wait until morning.

**………………………………………………………………**

Next Chapter: Meet the Parent…


	3. Jersey Girl

Coldfire 

Written by Darkstorm5000

Disclaimer: The X-Men and related characters in their various incarnations are the property of Marvel Comics and Marvel Enterprises.

**…………………………………………**

Part 3- Jersey Girl

In the span of less than twenty-four hours, Angelica Jones had seen her life get turned completely and irrevocably upside down. From her uncovering the fact that her Headmistress Emma Frost had been altering her thoughts and memories, to her learning that a number of her fellow classmates at the Massachusetts Academy were secretly involved in the radical mutant-extremist faction known as The Brotherhood, she then had to ultimately fight Pyro, Avalanche, and The Blob, three of the best that the Brotherhood had to offer, and it just seemed that things continued in a downward spiral for her, going from bad to a hell of alot worse.

But on this new day, Angelica now found herself in what were fairly unfamiliar surroundings, as she wandered down the seemingly endless labyrinth of corridors in Xavier's School for the Gifted, on her way to a meeting with school's Headmaster Professor Charles Xavier in his private study. This was after Angelica had woken up this morning on the sofa in the student rec-room of his school in Westchester County, New York following her very eventful night, and now she was trying to prepare herself for whatever new uncertainties lay in store for her.

"_Angelica, please come in."_

With those words from Professor Xavier thrust directly into her mind with the force of a gentle breeze, the redhead who stood just a little over five feet tall opened the large solid oak door in front of her, and Angelica proceeded to take a couple of steps inside to the Professor's study. Angelica had immediately realized that Professor Xavier was communicating with her telepathically, and given everything that had happened between her and Miss Frost, it was an awareness that Angelica was nonetheless very uncomfortable with.

"Hey Angelica, I see you found your way back down here without a map. When I first got here, it took me almost a week before I stopped getting lost, and I thought the Professor might have to end up mind-calling you with directions too." Bobby Drake smiled and happily told Angelica, as he stood with his back up against the wall close to the Professor's desk, dressed in a blue and white-striped, Rugby long-sleeved shirt and a pair of loose-fitting, soft-washed jeans.

"Yeah, about the mind-calling. Could you maybe lay off of those, at least until I can get my mind straight over exactly what Miss Frost did to me?" Angelica now asked Professor Xavier, as she closed the door behind her.

Angelica came in and stood just inside of the door, dressed in an orange cable-knit turtleneck, camel-colored pleated pants, and was wearing an expression that displayed just how leery she was of anyone poking around in her head right now.

"Of course, Angelica. I've grown so accustomed over the years with automatically communicating with my students telepathically, I apologize for not taking into consideration your justifiable reservations regarding it." Professor Xavier told her, as he sat behind his desk in the study, wearing one of his customary black suits with a white dress shirt and red tie.

"It's alright, really. You don't have to apologize, sir." Angelica smiled and replied, and felt kind of silly for even bringing up the subject to Professor Xavier, especially since he had been nice enough to open up his home and school to her so freely.

"I trust that you are feeling better this morning?" Professor Xavier now inquired of Angelica, as Bobby came over and picked up a newspaper that was sitting on the corner-edge of Professor Xavier's desk.

"Alot better. Even though, I got a few weird looks upstairs when some of your students saw me coming out of Kitty's room." Angelica now said, as she came across the study and stopped right in front of the Professor's desk. Angelica was referring to her trip to the upstairs dormitories, where she had gone to shower and change clothes after she had awoken this morning.

"I will gather them all together later and explained what has happened." Professor Xavier told her, as Bobby unfolded the newspaper that he had picked up, now holding it open in front of him.

"Well, just show them this and I think they'll understand everything." Bobby smirked and said, as Professor Xavier had already seen the front page headline of the Daily Bugle, but Angelica was just now being given that first opportunity.

_**THE DAILY BUGLE**_

**New York's Finest Daily News!**

(Final Edition)

_Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends?_

_By Joy Mercado_

"You've gotta be kidding?" Was the only thing Angelica could manage to slowly articulate, as she walked over to Bobby and took the paper into her hands, closely examining the story that had been run as the paper's headline.

"See, I told you we'd make the news. And it looks like we even managed to bump news of Wilson Fisk getting off from the top spot too." Bobby further said, as he pointed down towards the bottom of the page at a tag line that read 'Mistrial Declared in Alleged Kingpin of Crime Case, by Ben Urich', but Angelica's emerald eyes remained fixated on the Daily Bugle's lead story.

Angelica read on about Spider-Man being involved in a mutant melee in mid-town Manhattan, about how recently escaped convict Frederick Dukes, aka The Blob, had also been sighted in the disturbance along with an Iceman, and how it remained unconfirmed as to whether this was the same 'Iceman' seen a few months ago helping to liberate Washington D.C. from the attempted Sentinel takeover.

"I wonder who took these pictures?" Angelica now said, as she commented on the photo on the front page showing Spider-Man, Bobby, and herself flying away from the scene of the fight, "I don't remember seeing any photographers standing around."

"It's probably the same guy that manages to get all those other photos of Spider-Man." Bobby surmised, as he stood next to Angelica and looked down with her at the newspaper in her hands.

"We should consider ourselves fortunate that neither of you are easily recognizable to anyone in these shots." Professor Xavier now commented, referring to the fact that Bobby was iced-up in the photo and that the aura from Angelica's energy-field obscured any of their distinguishable features, in addition to the fact that the photo seemed to have almost been intentionally snapped from an angle that would have made it virtually impossible to identify either of them anyways.

"Except for everyone back in Snow Valley. The Brotherhood'll definitely recognize and know who's in it." Angelica now said to Bobby and the Professor.

"Since you've brought up the subject, I wanted to let you to know that I've called and spoken to Emma Frost earlier this morning." Professor Xavier told Angelica and Bobby.

"What did you talk to her about?" Angelica curiously questioned him.

"I informed her of your decision not to return to the Massachusetts Academy." Professor Xavier replied.

"And what did she say?" Angelica asked, almost dreading his response.

"She certainly wasn't thrilled to hear that, but she didn't voice any objections to me. Which is as I had expected, given everything that Bobby had told me this morning regarding what transpired with all of you last night." Professor Xavier answered her, referencing the debriefing that he and Bobby had conducted together earlier that morning. It had taken place before Professor Xavier had sent Bobby back to the student rec-room, to check on Angelica and to see if she was awake.

Then, the Professor proceeded to reveal to Angelica another conversation that he had that morning.

"I have also contacted your father, as well."

"You did? What'd you tell him?" Angelica really wanted to know

"A number of things, but mainly your desire not to return to Snow Valley. I told him that I would be more than willing to accept you as a transfer here, even in the middle of the semester." Professor Xavier told Angelica, leaning back slightly in his wheel-chair as he made his offer to her.

"Did he say it was okay?" Angelica was now dying to know.

"Actually, he didn't say anything about it one way or the other. What he did say is that he very much wanted to talk to you. In person." Professor Xavier explained, "I told him that I would have someone from the school drive you home to West Morris at once, and Bobby has volunteered to escort you back there."

"He must be really mad because I ran away from the Massachusetts Academy. I know he's gonna make me go back there, I just know it!" Angelica said, as she started to become visibly upset at the very prospect of going back to the private school located in Massachusetts, and looked as though she might begin to cry.

"Don't worry, everything's gonna be alright." Bobby now said to Angelica, as he came over to her and supportively put his arm around her, "C'mon, let's cut out of here now, so you can go get things cleared up with your Dad."

As Angelica and Bobby then turned to head towards the study's door together, Bobby stopped and turned back around to now say something else to the Professor.

"I forgot to ask, how did things go with your meeting with those people who sent that car to pick you up last night?" Bobby turned back around to inquire.

"Everything is fine, for the time being at least." Professor Xavier replied, talking about that urgent piece of business he had been called away on the previous evening, which he unfortunately had been unable to postpone.

"You wanna stop in the kitchen and grab something to eat before we leave?" Bobby now turned back and asked Angelica, as he had pulled his arm back from around her waist, and the two of them crossed the expanse of the study side-by-side.

"No, I'm fine. I just want to hurry up and get back home." Angelica anxiously replied, as the study's door came to a close behind the pair, both of whom had just stepped into the hallway outside and would soon be making their way out to the campus' car garage.

**……………………………………………………**

After spending roughly the last hour heading south from Westchester County on the I-87/287 corridor, which they had traveled on the night before when they departed from New York City following their fight with the Brotherhood, Angelica and Bobby now found themselves crossing the state line into New Jersey over the Hudson River via the George Washington Bridge. And, as the red Dodge SRT4 that they were riding in merged onto the New Jersey Turnpike, they knew that they were now one step closer on their trek to Angelica's home.

While Bobby was rolling his driver-side window back up, after paying at and then pulling away from one of the toll booths on the Turnpike, the pair's fairly quiet and thankfully uneventful trip continued on. In the meantime, Angelica continued to stare pensively out of her passenger-side window, her mind heavy with everything that had happened to her within the span of less than a day.

"I guess it must feel pretty good to know we're not too far from you being back home?" Bobby now commented to Angelica, as he continued navigating through the semi-congested traffic on the four-lane highway.

"Actually, if my Dad didn't still live in West Morris, I don't know if I'd ever go back there?" Angelica replied, which somewhat surprised Bobby with her remark, as she continued staring out of her window at the endless assortment of trees lining the sides of the highway. A few of them still managed to maintain a modestly green appearance this late in the season, but the majority were bare and had already lost their withered and brown leaves by this point in the year.

"What makes you say that?" Bobby asked Angelica, regarding her comment about not wanting to return to the place that had been her home for nearly a year before her enrollment at the Massachusetts Academy.

"Let's just say I don't have very many fond memories there. Matter of fact, I have some pretty terrible ones from there, and that's one reason why I was kinda glad when I finally did leave." Angelica revealed, as some of those unpleasant memories now began to conjure themselves up in her mind, "There was this girl named Cassie at my high school, who just loved to find new ways to torment me. She used to always pick on me, and then she'd come up with these horrible nicknames for me that she'd have a lot of the other kids at school calling me by."

"Like what?" Bobby curiously inquired, as he kept his eyes glued on the traffic in front of, and all around them.

"Cassie, and the popular kids she hung out with, had a buncha them." Angelica further explained, as the epithet that she truly despised came to mind, one that she had long tried to forget, "But, the worst nickname they had for me had to be 'shit-breaks'."

"You mean, like that guy in those American Pie movies?" Bobby looked over and asked Angelica, as he couldn't help but laugh a little.

"Yes, and it's not funny!" Angelica angrily snapped back at him, "Every time she saw me, Cassie would always shout and point 'Look out everyone, here comes Angelica. Shit always breaks when she's around'."

Angelica then couldn't help but pause at the thought of how much those insults hurt her, as the pain at having dared to even reveal any of this to Bobby was very much evident in her voice.

"Things seemed to have a weird habit of going wrong whenever I was around, and stuff was always either spontaneously melting or exploding around me. It got so bad that even I had started to wonder if maybe I really was bad luck?" Angelica continued, as she now sat with her elbow propped up on the passenger door's arm-rest, her face gently resting against her right hand that she had half-curled up into a fist, "It took me a long time before I figured out that it was happening because I was a mutant, and even then I didn't know the first thing about the microwave energy my body was producing, or had any idea on how to control it. That's why I was so glad when Miss Frost came and explained things to me, and…well, you know how all of that ended up turning out."

"Yeah, do I." Bobby remarked, as his curiosity about Angelica continued, "So this girl, did she do all of this to you because you accidentally melted her I-pod or somethin'?"

"No, I think she actually hated me because she found out I liked the same guy that she did, a guy at our school named Chuckie Belson." Angelica replied, remembering one of the most embarrassing days of her life. It was when she unwittingly dropped one of her notebooks on the ground and Cassie picked it up, seeing where Angelica had scribbled Chuckie's name all over the inside of the notebook's cover and had affectionately traced little hearts around his name too.

"It was all worth it though, right?" Bobby further asked.

"If you mean, was it worth the living hell she put me through over some stupid crush that went absolutely nowhere, then no. Chuckie was way out of my league, and I don't think he had any idea that I was even alive." Angelica answered him, "And who can blame him, there's really not that much to notice anyways."

With that last statement, Bobby couldn't help but look over at Angelica and take in her curvaceously-built, classic Kate Winslet-esque physique, which he himself had no problem in noticing. And, Bobby further thought to himself that if this Chuckie-guy was able to overlook someone as beautiful and as wonderful as Angelica, the he had to be legally blind or something. But, as this entire conversation on the subject of love, and of love lost or not found progressed, it wound up bringing something else to mind for Angelica.

"I heard that you used to date that girl Rogue?" Angelica said, as she was now the one to ask questions, recalling this little tidbit that she had overheard John mentioning to Tabitha on their corporate jet ride from Snow Valley to the joint semi-formal dance that had been held at the Hellfire Club in New York a few weeks ago.

"Yeah, emphasis on 'used to'." Bobby told her, in regards to his and Rogue's relationship now.

"Why'd you two break up? I remember seeing her at the Gala, and she seemed pretty nice." Angelica commented, after having gotten the chance to put a face to the name that she had overheard on a whim, and remembered seeing the girl that John had described to be Rogue that night.

"We broke up for the same reason most people do, over something stupid." Bobby replied simply, as the car continued its acceleration down the highway.

Now, Bobby was the one left to reminisce over painful memories, and over the circumstances surrounding his decision to end his relationship with Rogue, remembering the misery that he had gone through as a result for some time afterwards.

**……………………………………………………**

As the red car carrying Bobby and Angelica came to a slow stop in front of a small, one-story house with faded sage paint on its exterior, Angelica knew the moment that she had been anticipating had now come. Now, she was in West Morris, and she was finally back home.

"Well, here we are." Bobby said to Angelica, as he turned the car's ignition off in front of her home, following a journey that had lasted nearly two and a half hours.

"Yeah." Was all Angelica said in response, as she looked out of her window at a house that she hadn't seen in well more than six months.

Then, as Angelica turned away from her passenger-side view of her house, which still had the same old beat-up tan Ford Ranger that was older than her parked out in front of it, she now spoke to Bobby again.

"Sorry, I know it's not much to look at, but this neighborhood really isn't as bad as it seems." Angelica looked over towards Bobby and said, doing so almost apologetically.

While the neighborhood that Angelica and her Dad lived in wasn't exactly prime real estate, there were certainly places that existed which were far worse off. But having had the opportunity to see such magnificent places, as the ones that existed in Snow Valley and in Westchester, Angelica felt a slight tinge of embarrassment at Bobby now seeing that this was the place that she called home.

"You don't have to apologize, it's alright really." Bobby told Angelica, as he looked over at her and could sense what was bothering her, before abruptly changing the subject to what he was truly concerned about, "Have you thought about what you're going to tell your Dad?"

"The truth, I guess." Angelica replied, looking over right into Bobby's clear blue eyes.

"Okay, but you might want to leave out the part about us getting into a fight last night. Parents tend to freak over that kinda stuff." Bobby advised her.

"Yeah, and I'm sure my Dad's probably already on the verge of flippin' out as it is." Angelica replied, nodding her head in agreement, "So, ummm, here goes."

Angelica then took in a deep sighing breath and was just about to open the door on her side of the car, when Bobby all of a sudden reached over and took her left hand into his.

"Don't worry. It's like I told you earlier, everything's going to be fine. And you'll be heading back to Westchester with me in no time." Bobby once again supportively told Angelica, which caused her to blush a little at his encouraging words, and more importantly, because of the comforting and caressing manner in which he was holding her hand.

The pair then got of their car now parked next to the curb, and went over to open a small entrance gate adjoining a picket fence that surrounded the Jones residence. Bobby and Angelica proceeded through the gate and slowly made their way along a brick walkway that led right up to the house's front door. After climbing a small three-step staircase up to the porch, Angelica went and unlocked the front door for them, then she and Bobby proceeded on inside.

"Daddy, are you in here?" Angelica called out, as she and Bobby came into the house and closed the door behind them, hanging their coats up by the front door.

"In here, honey." They heard a voice call out from the next room, and Angelica and Bobby immediately followed it to its source.

Sitting on the sofa in the living room was Bartholomew Jones, a modestly-built construction worker and father-of-one in his early forties, who this afternoon was dressed in his usual weekday ensemble consisting of a blue button-up workshirt, faded blue jeans, and dark brown work boots. This was despite the fact that a concerned Mr. Jones hadn't been at work today, choosing instead to wait for his daughter's anticipated arrival following the lengthy telephone conversation that he had earlier that morning with Professor Xavier.

"So, do you want to explain to me what's all this business about you just up and running off from your school?" Mr. Jones calmly asked Angelica, as he stood up from the sofa, the light wafting in from a nearby window making the modest graying around his temples all the more visible.

"I left because I…I just don't belong there." Angelica fidgeted and said to him in response, as she and Bobby stood over by the room's entrance.

"I don't buy that. Besides, you know it's way too dangerous for you to be out on your own like this." Mr. Jones replied, this time his tone more serious.

"You mean, it's because I'm too dangerous, don't you?" Angelica bitingly said to him, as a point of contention in her relationship with her father now began to surface.

"And what is that supposed to mean, young lady?" Mr. Jones demanded of her, as Angelica prepared herself for what she was about to say next.

"You never really asked me if I even wanted to go off with Miss Frost. Face it, the only reason you sent me to the Massachusetts Academy is so you wouldn't have to deal with your mutie-freak daughter!" Angelica scornfully yelled at her father.

"That's not why I sent you there, and you know it!" Mr. Jones loudly replied, although his daughter had managed to strike a nerve with him.

There was no doubt that Bart Jones loved his daughter, but even he wasn't perfect. When he first learned that Angelica was a mutant, he was fearful for his little girl having to live in a world where being born with an extra and exceptional set of genes was a social stigma. But even beyond that, Mr. Jones was reluctant to deal with any of these issues that his daughter now had to face, and felt ashamed of the fact that Angelica was a mutant.

Which was the main reason why he felt such great relief when Emma Frost unexpectedly appeared, promising that she could help his daughter. When she made her offer to Mr. Jones, it came not too long after Angelica had accidentally used her powers to set fire to her high school's gymnasium, following a cruel prank that had been played on Angelica by some of her classmates. Mr. Jones readily agreed to send Angelica off to Snow Valley in the hopes that his daughter would learn how to control these powers that she had born with, and as selfish as he knew it was, he also did it so that Angelica would eventually learn how to hide her abilities and could hopefully one day at least pretend to be normal.

"Daddy, I think we need to talk. I mean, really talk, about me and about my mutant powers." A now calmed down Angelica said, as she closed her eyes and took a sighingly deep breath.

"You're right, I think it's way past time we did." Mr. Jones now agreed, as he walked across the living room over to the door of a small den that sat adjacent to it, with Angelica following behind him and soon sliding the door to the den closed behind them.

Now left alone in the living room, Bobby went over and sat down on the sofa to look at the afternoon news program that Angelica's Dad had been watching on TV. But as he sat there, Bobby soon realized that he wasn't quite as alone in the living room as he thought.

Coming in and walking over to one its corners, and acting as though she owned the place, was an orange and black Tabby housecat. Having had a cat of his own back home in Boston, Bobby was very familiar with how to get its attention. Bobby made a gesture by lightly tapping his hand on his knee to beckon the cat, although he knew from personal experience that it was a gamble as to whether the cat would actually respond to him, or would just continue on about its business without so much as giving him a second look.

But, in this case the cat slowly sauntered over to Bobby, first sniffing around his feet and then hopping up onto the other end of sofa. After a few minutes the cat nudged its way over next to him, and was soon purring as Bobby began to stroke the back of her neck. All the while, Bobby patiently sat and wondered what the outcome of the conversation between Angelica and her father would be?

**……………………………………………………**

More than an hour later, Angelica and her father finally emerged from the den, having had the chance to clear the air and get some things out in the open between them during that time.

"…just remember we have a deal. No more running away." Mr. Jones was in the middle of saying, as the door now slid open in front of him.

"Yes, Daddy." Angelica happily replied, as she came out of the den with her father's arm around her.

"And since Xavier's school is a lot closer, I expect to see you more often than I did when you were in Massachusetts." Mr. Jones further said, giving Bobby a definitive answer as to the question of which school Angelica was going to wind up at.

"I promise. Plus, now that Pumpkin's made herself a new friend, I guess Bobby'll have to come back with me for a visit too." Angelica playfully giggled, as they came out to see Bobby and her pet cat Pumpkin sitting and semi-bonding on the sofa together.

"Yeah, I've got my own four-legged welcoming committee here." Bobby replied, as he continued stroking Pumpkin, knowing full well that cats more often than not didn't endear themselves so quickly to strangers.

"I don't believe it! I spend everyday in the same house as that crazy cat and she barely comes near me, but she's all over you in the span of five minutes." Mr. Jones now said to Bobby, as he walked over towards the sofa and Pumpkin noticeably took her leave by heading back into another room.

"It's probably because of that time when you threatened to take her to an animal shelter, after she accidentally ripped down those blinds and curtains." Angelica reminded him, as she pointed over at one of the windows in the living room.

"You know I wasn't serious, sweetheart." Angelica's father turned back and said to her.

"I know, but I'm not the one who still needs convincing." Angelica once again giggled, as she pointed out that detail to him.

"Well Bobby, since Pumpkin's given you her seal of approval, I guess it's only right that I should come over and properly introduce myself too." Mr. Jones smiled and said, as he stopped in front of the sofa and offered his hand to Bobby, having not done so earlier because of his pressing desire to first find out what exactly had been going on with his daughter.

"It's a pleasure, sir." Bobby replied, as he stood up and shook Mr. Jones' hand.

"Since you don't look old enough to be a teacher there, I'm going to assume that you're also one of Xavier's students?" Mr. Jones commented to Bobby, as he took a few steps back from him, his demeanor now much calmer and more relaxed than when Bobby and Angelica had first arrived earlier in the afternoon, "And since you go to this school, I'm also assuming that means…"

"That, I'm a mutant too. Yeah, I guess it does." Bobby finished and confirmed for him.

"I've seen this Charles Xavier on TV before, making those speeches for mutant rights. It takes some guts for a regular joe to stand up and say things like that, especially with the way things are these days." Mr. Jones further commented, as he like the majority of the public were unaware that Professor Xavier was himself a mutant, "So, what kind of teacher is he like?"

"He's the best. I couldn't begin to tell you all of the things I've learned from him." Bobby replied, as he kept his answer intentionally vague since he wasn't sure just what Angelica had told her father.

"He must be somethin', especially with trustin' one of his students to drive my daughter all the way out here to New Jersey." Mr. Jones remarked with a bit of concern over that decision in his voice, as he put his arm back around Angelica.

"But, Bobby's a reeaaally good driver. And he's really safe too, Daddy." Angelica now looked up at her Dad and interjected on Bobby's behalf.

"Yeah, the Professor's also ridden with me a lot of times before. Like when we came to visit the Massachusetts Academy a few months ago, I drove him all the way back from Snow Valley to Westchester." Bobby explained to Mr. Jones.

"And it looks like your recruiting drive worked too. It's no wonder my Angelica kept going on and on about how sweet and nice you were just a few minutes ago, now I have a good idea where all of that started." Mr. Jones smiled a little, as he revealed some of what had been discussed between them in the closed confines of the family den.

"**Daddy**!" Angelica looked up at him and blurted out, her expression totally aghast as her face turned a deep shade of red. Angelica felt awkward, to say the least, that Bobby now knew he had been a substantial part of the private conversation that had taken place between her and her father.

"Tell me, what do your parents think about you going to this school Xavier secretly set up for mutants?" Mr. Jones now asked Bobby, as he was trying to get a better picture of this young man before him, particularly since his daughter had gone on at such great lengths about him.

"I really don't know." Bobby replied simply, for reasons that neither Angelica nor her Dad were aware of.

"What do you mean?" Mr. Jones further inquired.

"Well, I haven't spoken to my family for awhile. When I finally came out to them, you know, about me being a mutant, my parents and my brother didn't take it too well. The cops got called out to my house and there was this really huge fight and…that's pretty much where I left things." Bobby explained to them.

"That's too bad." Mr. Jones told Bobby, as he couldn't bear the thought of things deteriorating to that point between him and Angelica.

Meanwhile, as Angelica stood and listened to what Bobby was saying, she also wondered to herself how he had managed to deal with that level of turmoil in his life, being totally unaware of the lasting emotional scarring that this singular incident had actually left on Bobby.

"So, I imagine you two are probably starved by now? Let's go out somewhere, pizza's on me." Mr. Jones looked up at a clock on the living room wall and now offered them, remembering that pizza was one of his daughter's favorite foods.

But, instead of receiving an immediate response from them, Angelica and Bobby just threw each strange looks, before she finally gave her father an answer.

"Um, how about burgers instead?" Angelica replied to her Dad, as she and Bobby hadn't quite yet gotten over the chaos that had erupted the night before, at a now burnt-out and demolished pizzeria in Manhattan.

**……………………………………………………………**

After an enjoyable dinner together, which was followed by a quick stop back at the Jones residence so that Angelica could gather a few of her things, and then give her father a fond farewell, Bobby and Angelica found themselves back on the New Jersey Turnpike, now on their way back to Westchester in the early hours of this evening.

But, a brief intermission in their journey had come in the form of a refueling stop, as the red SRT4 they were traveling in had turned off at a gas station right off of the Turnpike. Once they had filled up and Bobby had paid the station's attendant, he then pulled the car over into an adjacent parking lot next to a small diner, so that he could perform a brief and routine check of the air pressure in the car's tires.

"You sure you don't want me to go in and get you anything? You hardly ate anything at all earlier." Bobby now asked Angelica, as he knelt down by the rear passenger-side tire with a pressure gauge in his hands on this chilly and gray overcast evening, the last vestiges of the sun's concealed light now providing its closing illuminations for this day.

"No thanks, I'm all right. I guess it's just all the butterflies dancin' around in my stomach that's got my appetite on vacation." Angelica smiled and replied, as she had gotten out of the car to help keep Bobby company. Angelica was now sitting on the side of the sporty red car up on the edge of its hood, her legs dangling down just inches above the ground right in front of the car's passenger-side fender.

"Why would you have butterflies?" Bobby further questioned Angelica, as he looked up at her from his inspection of one of the tires.

"I'm going to be the new girl, at a new school. Again. You can't blame me for feeling just a little bit nervous?" Angelica explained to him, as she sat there and pulled her tan coat a little tighter around herself on this crisp evening.

"I guess not, but you're not going to be that new. I mean, this won't even be your first night there or anything." Bobby replied, as he stood up and made his way around the back of the car, heading for the driver's side of the car to check those tires before they departed.

"Still, I moved around enough to know that your first day at a new school pretty much sets up how things are gonna go for you there." Angelica was saying, when she was yet again caught up in another fit of the giggles, and the pleasant sound of her laughter immediately drew Bobby's attention.

"What's so funny?" Bobby now inquired, as he peered up at her just over the roof of the car.

"I was just thinking about something my grandma told me, before she died." Angelica replied, still smiling as she started to quiet down.

"What, was it a joke or something?" Bobby curiously asked her.

"No, I guess it was more dumb than anything, at least dumb on my part." Angelica said to him, "Come here and I'll show you."

With that Bobby took a clean rag, which he had earlier gotten out of the trunk and put in his back pocket, and wiped his hands. He then refastened one of the buttons up on his blue bomber jacket, before proceeding around to the other side of the car where Angelica was sitting.

"Alright, so show me what's so funny?" Bobby now told Angelica, as he stood right in front of her.

"Okay, look at my hand." Angelica said to Bobby, as she remained seated on the edge of the hood and opened up her right palm, "What do you see?"

"Obviously this is a trick question, but I'm going to go with the easiest answer. I see a hand, which belongs to a girl." Bobby sarcastically replied.

"But, don't you see it. I have the rare mark of the 'M' in my hand." Angelica revealed in an astonished toned, as she took her left hand and traced the 'M' outline that was in her right palm.

"Yeah, I guess you do." Bobby told Angelica, as he watched her index finger navigate the crease lines in her palm.

"Okay, now watch this." Angelica said to him, as she took one of Bobby's hands into hers, turning his palm face up and now running her index finger across it in a similar pattern as she had her own, "Look, now you've got it too!"

"Uh-huh. So, it looks like you're grandma was really into beginner's magic tricks, wasn't she?" Bobby remarked to her, as Angelica now took his other hand into hers and also turned it facing upward to show him the same 'M' that was in that one.

"Nope. My 'Nana just felt sorry for her 'plain-jane' granddaughter, and made up that lame story to try and make me think that I was more special than I really was." Angelica told Bobby, as her smile began to lessen considerably. Angelica then sat and leaned back a little further onto the hood, now releasing both of Bobby's hands from her grasp.

"I mean, can you believe that I was actually stupid enough to believe that I was special, just because of some stupid mark in my palm that everybody has. I guess you must think I'm the most clueless girl on Earth!" Angelica continued, as she began another unexpected trip down memory lane, "When I first found out I was a mutant, I started believing her and thought that maybe she was onto something, that maybe there really was something special about me after all. But, when I arrived at the Massachusetts Academy and I was surrounded by a buncha other kids, all of them with powers and stuff too, I felt like just another face in the crowd again."

"Well, you know what I think? I think your face is pretty enough that it'd stand out in any crowd." Bobby told Angelica, as he thought it was high-time that she knew what he thought about her.

"Really?" Angelica skeptically replied with one eyebrow raised, even though her face couldn't help but light up a little at Bobby's compliment.

"Yeah, and you know what else? I think you're special and unique, and not just because of some mark in your hand or because of your powers either." Bobby told Angelica, as he took both of her hands into his and slowly leaned in closer towards this unassuming, yet very beautiful girl right in front of him.

The mutual attraction between Bobby and Angelica had been building for some time now, going back to perhaps their first meeting in Snow Valley those many months ago. And, it shouldn't have been a surprise that at some point those emotions would eventually get the better of these two. What was a surprise, however, was Angelica's reaction, as she shied away from Bobby, just as he was about to kiss her.

"What's the matter?" Bobby now asked Angelica, worried that maybe he had misread the signals bouncing off between them.

"Well, it's just…" Angelica started to say and then paused, as she cast a look downward towards the loose asphalt and gravel on the ground, "It's, just that I've never…um, actually kissed a guy…I mean, really kissed a guy, in that way before."

"Don't worry. It's easy, 'Angel'." Bobby told Angelica, as he placed his right hand gently underneath her chin, raising her face back up so that her green eyes now met his blue ones.

Bobby softly moved his hand around to push away the few strands of her long voluminous red hair that were partially shrouding Angelica's face. He then slowly and deliberately guided her mouth to meet with his, all the while wrapping his arms in a romantic fashion around her. And when their lips finally met, Angelica was instantly overwhelmed by this sensation of two people physically expressing the tremendous and growing affections that they felt for one another.

The intensity of their kiss was great enough that it hit Angelica as though a flame had shot right through her, although she was more than positive that her powers had nothing to do with how she was feeling. On top of that, the massaging sensation of her mouth pressed against his served in helping to give Angelica an up close, and a much more intimate, understanding of what the phrase 'take my breath away' actually meant.

But ignoring all of these self-observations, Angelica chose to simply close her eyes and lose herself in the moment. Instinctively, she put her hands up on Bobby's shoulders above the collar of his jacket, lightly rubbing her fingers across the back of his neck as she sat there with him, relishing and loving every second of her very first kiss…

…………………………………………………………

Next Chapter: _Melt with You…_


	4. Melt With You

Coldfire 

Written by Darkstorm5000

Disclaimer: The X-Men and related characters in their various incarnations are the property of Marvel Comics and Marvel Enterprises.

**…………………………………………**

Part 4- _Melt With You_

The.

New.

Girl.

At.

School.

Those five words carried with them, and were easily capable of evoking, a widely varying range of meanings and feelings. Particularly, for a young lady to whom these words were being used to describe, and who was also all too familiar with what it meant to be the new girl in some new place, somewhere.

And for Angelica Jones, at this moment there were a number of other words that could have been used to describe her as well. But, the most apt would have probably been 'frantic'.

Frantic, as in not wanting to be late, at least not for her very first class this morning at Xavier's School for the Gifted. After hearing most of the other girls' shouting out to her from out in the hallway that they were on their way downstairs, Angelica was currently rushing around her new room in a desperate attempt to get dressed and join them. Which, was a task that had been made that much more difficult for Angelica, since she had yet to have the opportunity to completely unpack all of her clothes. It was a chore which she had neglected, thanks to her having had spent the majority of the previous evening, following their return from New Jersey, regaling most of the other students' with her and Bobby's tale of how they had faced off against, and then defeated the Brotherhood in New York City.

And, with how they had done it with more than just an inconsequentially helping hand from Spider-Man, of course.

"I'd better hurry up and get downstairs, before everyone starts thinking that makin' fashionably-late entrances is my only power." Angelica was quietly saying to herself, as she sat on the edge of her half-made bed and put on a hastily thrown together light-gray, long-sleeved ensemble, which was completed by the white sneakers in her hands that she was quickly forcing each of her feet into.

But, a quick survey of the room to make sure that she hadn't forgotten anything now wound up revealing something else to Angelica, something which she hadn't really noticed that was sitting over in the corner of the bedroom during the preceding nighttime hours. It was more than just the walls that were painted in a lemon color, or the pink-and-white checkered curtains covering the window that partially obscured the rays of a new morning sun. No, it was something else that Angelica hadn't been expecting to see, at least not here.

"I didn't know the Professor let his students' keep pets here at the school." Angelica said to herself, as she stood up from her bed after putting her shoes on.

Angelica then proceeded to walk over to the opposite side of the room, where the other bed that belonged to her new roommate Kitty Pryde was. On the floor right beside Kitty's bed was another smaller, oval-shaped bed in a brown and sage striped-design, which also had a name stitched in black into the cloth material that covered the bed.

"Lockheed." Angelica read on its front, as she bent over slightly to more closely inspect the bed, which she could see was small enough that it had obviously been designed for a pet to sleep in.

"Oh, well. After being around cats' that can be as temperamental and moody as Pumpkin and Catseye are sometimes, I'm sure Lockheed'll have to be a breath of fresh air." Angelica thought to herself, as she just assumed that Lockheed was also a pet of the feline-variety. And, it now appeared that there were three individuals who were all in for a VERY big surprise, very soon.

Angelica then straightened herself back up, remembering that she did have somewhere else that she needed to be getting to. Angelica left what was now her's and Kitty's bedroom, and made her way down the hallway towards the elevator. Which one of the other girls' at the school, whose name escaped her at the moment, had shown to Angelica last night and had told her would take her downstairs to the main floor, and then even further down below to the mansion's subterranean levels.

**………………………………………………………**

After being shuttled down to the ground level of the mansion, and then dozens of feet farther below, Angelica now found herself in the school's sublevels, which was where lessons of a different sort were conducted. As Angelica made her way down this corridor that was completely tiled in steel from head-to-toe, she couldn't help but observe just how eerily similar everything down here was, when compared to the underground levels back at the Massachusetts Academy. It was a coincidental resemblance that went right down to the location of the locker room area and the Combat Room, which were in roughly the same place here as they were back in Massachusetts, although Professor Xavier called his Combat Room 'The Danger Room'.

Walking into the girls' locker room, Angelica looked around to see if there was anyone else in there at the moment. But seeing no one, she proceeded on in and began a search to try to find out where her locker was. That is, until she felt a presence slowly slip up from behind.

Spinning around and fully expecting to see one of her new classmates standing there, Angelica was taken aback when she did see someone standing there.

On all four paws.

Now before Angelica stood a fairly large and very intimidating brown wolf, who was curiously looking up with its yellow-gold eyes completely fixated on her, and had its bushy brown-tail slowly wagging back and forth behind it.

"Um…you wouldn't happen to be Lockheed, would you?" Angelica nervously asked and was so unsettled at her having run into a real-life creature of the wild down here, that she really wasn't thinking about what it was that she was saying.

Then, Angelica saw the most unusual thing, as if this situation wasn't already strange enough. The wolf down in front of her suddenly, and inexplicably, stood back up on its hind legs and started to go through some means of physical transformation. Right before her eyes, the creature's lupine-features lessened and soon disappeared as it metamorphosed, leaving in its place the form of a human girl.

"'Course not, ye silly." This girl, who now stood about Angelica's height, had green-eyes like her, and had hair that was a shade of red similar to her's, although it was of a much shorter length, said to Angelica.

"Huh?" Was the only thing Angelica could manage to utter in response.

"Mah name's nae Lockheed, it's Rahne." Rahne Sinclair now told Angelica, as the young Scots-girl took a few steps towards her, "Wolfsbane, if ye must, but that's only when we're trainin' in the Danger Room."

"Oh…uh, yeah, right." Angelica fumbled out, as she saw Rahne and instantly recognized seeing her last night.

Rahne was one of the many students' at Xavier's that she had been introduced to the previous evening. And, Angelica also remembered that Rahne had seemed to be shyest and perhaps the most introverted of the bunch, which was something Angelica herself could definitely relate to. Rahne was content with sitting off on the periphery of the group the entire evening, silently and intently listening to them as they talked, but not really saying much herself.

As Angelica further studied Rahne's now human appearance, she immediately took notice of the uniform that she had on. Rahne's uniform was made out of a dark-blue leather material, consisting of thick leather gloves, a zip-up jacket top, dark-blue leather pants and matching leather boots, and it was trimmed all over in a silver-gray color, with a pair of silver 'X' symbols' stitched on the uniform's collar and on both of her shoulders. It was almost identical in its basic design to those magenta-and-purple leather uniforms, which Angelica had grown accustomed to wearing during her training sessions back in Snow Valley.

"We was startin' t'wonder if maybe ye had overslept or somethin'? Then, when I was gettin' ready t'head down t' the Danger Room mahself, I smelt ye comin' in here." Rahne explained to Angelica, as she placed her leather gloved-hand on Angelica's shoulder and then pointed over towards a specific area in the locker room, "Yuir uniform is hangin' up over there. Ye'd best hurry up and get into it, before the Professor gets after the both of us for bein' late."

With that little reminder, Angelica went over to the area in which Rahne had directed her, seeing the cubicle where her dark-blue, junior X-Men uniform was hanging. In the span of just a few minutes, and with some invaluable assistance from Rahne, Angelica had expeditiously changed and was now fully dressed in her new school ensemble. The pair then quickly made their way out the locker room together, as they hurried down the metallic corridor towards the Danger Room.

**…………………………………………………**

As the huge steel-doors to Danger Room slid open in front of them, Angelica and Rahne now looked inside of this sports' arena-sized, dome-shaped training chamber to see that everyone else had already gathered in there, most of them warming up in preparation of today's training session. For Angelica, it was her overriding hope that she just wouldn't do anything to embarrass herself on her first day, or at least not to do anything so embarrassing that she would never be able to live it down.

"_Bom Dia_, Angelica! For a second there, we were starting to think that you had chickened out on us? Which I can understand, since the Danger Room can be intimidating to a first-timer." Roberto Da Costa, the solar-powered mutant also known as Sunspot was the first to say, as he smiled at them and stood next to a pommel-horse inside, while the two girls' made their entry and the Danger Room's immense steel-doors slid closed behind them.

Although the handsome, dark-haired Brazilian teen who, unlike Rahne, had charisma and confidence enough to spare, which some would say was to the point of bordering on overly-confident braggadocio, had intended his remark to be a friendly ice-breaker towards his newest classmate, for Angelica and given the baggage that she carried with her from her own past, it sounded to her like Roberto's words were just being used as an opportunity to pick on 'the new girl'. But, she simply shook off whatever her insecurities regarding it were, as she continued on inside of the Danger Room to take her place among her new teammates.

As all twelve of the junior-level X-Men finished up their warm-up exercises without delay, the various gymnastics equipment that they had been using were lowered back down beneath the steel-tiled floor in the Danger Room. They all walked over and assembled together right below the training facility's control booth, looking up to the glass-encased control room above where Professor Xavier, Bobby Drake, and the youngest student at the school, Artie Maddocks, were all observing them from.

Professor X had chosen to forego his usual suit-apparel this morning and was dressed in a rather relaxed, brown turtleneck sweater with casual slacks, while Bobby stood beside him in the control booth fully decked out in his senior-level black leather uniform, trimmed in an ice-blue color.

"Today's training objective will have you facing the obstacle-course." Professor Xavier said, as he addressed his students' over the Danger Room's loud-speaker, and drew from them a number of mumbled groans from some of them at the prospect of having to go through the most difficult drill that they had faced so far, and the one that had given the junior X-Men the most trouble, "You will split up into two groups for this exercise. And as your team's co-captains, Samuel and Danielle will each pick who will be on their respective squads, and they will be responsible for mapping out your team's strategy. You will run, and re-run this course if necessary, until one of your teammate's successfully makes it through, or until your team's allocated time for today expires."

With that, Bobby entered in the commands to the control booth's computer from up above, which started up the arduous obstacle-course program. The various traps and pitfalls that made up this cordoned-off interior course emerged from the Danger Room's floor, walls, and ceiling, as the program simulation was now being readied for the junior X-Men to test their mettle against it.

Meanwhile, Samuel Guthrie, the rocket-powered mutant code-named Cannonball and Danielle Moonstar, the astral-projectionist code-named Mirage, set themselves to the task of selecting who would be on each of their teams' for this exercise. That is, until Roberto interrupted them just as Sam was about to make his first choice.

"Why don't we make it easy? Since we've got an even number on both sides now, how about making it boys vs. girls? And, we can even let the girls' go first, just so we won't make them look so bad when we beat the course in half their time." Roberto cockily suggested, as he walked over to Sam and Dani.

"You're on, 'Berto!" Dani responded to him, as she accepted his challenge on the girls' behalf, who were all now shooting dirty-looks in Roberto's direction.

The junior students', who were all also dressed in their dark-blue junior X-Men uniforms similar to Rahne's, but were cut in varying styles, proceeded to separate into their two groups. The boys' squad, which besides Cannonball and Sunspot also consisted of James Proudstar, the super-strong and agile Warpath; Julio Esteban Richter, the tremor-inducing Rictor; Jones Davidson, the digital-manipulating Circuit; and Jamie Madrox, the one-mutant proliferation machine known as Multiple Kid.

Meanwhile, the girls' squad made their way over towards the obstacle course in the middle of the Danger Room, as squad leader Mirage was joined by the aforementioned Wolfsbane and Firestar, and by Theresa Cassidy, who was capable of generating intense sonic-vibrations and was appropriately enough code-named Siryn; Amara Aquilla, the volcanic-controlling Magma; and Carmella Unuscione, whose ability to create a telekinetic force-field around herself had earned her the code-name of Barrier.

"Alright ladies', the floor's all yours. But make sure to keep an extra eye out for Firestar, so she won't get hurt her first day here. I mean, she might be a little scared since Spider-Man probably won't be swinging by anytime soon to give any of you an assist." Roberto smirked, as he once again addressed the junior-girls' and continued with his agitative comments. Which, caused some of the other boys' to chuckle a little at Roberto's slightly incendiary remarks, and which Angelica also once again took notice of.

Angelica now felt that Roberto was intentionally going out of his way to make fun of her, and she was determined to put an immediate stop to it by showing him and the others that she was more than capable of handling herself down here. And more importantly, that she belonged here.

"Me, scared? Not hardly!" Angelica exclaimed out of nowhere, as she looked over in Roberto's direction and responded to his questioning of her abilities. The anger inside of her was starting to swell, while the air around her began to pop and crackle from the tremendous microwave-energy that was now radiating from her body. A bright aura then quickly surrounded Firestar, an instant before she took flight and tore through the air in a loud and frighteningly-dynamic fashion, heading right for the obstacle course in this immense training-room.

As she barreled down right into the first section of this transparent, plastic tunneled-obstacle maze, Firestar saw that she would have to contend with a number of deterrents designed to prevent her from successfully achieving their training objective. The first of these was a huge and very intimidating spinning-gun turret, which shot up from the floor right in front of the entrance and began firing small paintballs at her. Easily dodging these paint-filled spheres that were sailing at her through the air, Firestar continued on unabated and quickly flew over the gun turret to enter the training passageway.

Now in this confined area, Firestar next had to face a series of plastic walls that repeatedly popped up and down from the top, the bottom, and the sides of the training tunnel's interior, which would force her to carefully maneuver herself and perfectly time her navigations past them. Once she had made it through this second part of the course, Firestar had to once again encounter objects being sent her way. This time, the projectiles' consisted of metal rods that were padded at each end and were fired at her at a very high velocity, being used in conjunction with larger and slower-moving leather bags that were filled with sand, all in an attempt to disrupt Firestar's timing and catch her off guard.

But, she smoothly breezed past these ensnarements as well, and Firestar proceeded forward towards the obstacle course's finish line. Where a large battle-droid, which resembled a large robotic-construct that had been lifted straight out of a 1950's sci-fi movie, awaited her. Rather than pause and give the battle-droid a chance to analyze a means of preventing her from getting past it, Firestar unleashed a massive energy-beam at the robot and melted its entire upper-torso.

"1 minute, 6 seconds." The Danger Room's computer said, as it announced in its monotone, automated-voice the time results of Firestar's run through the obstacle course. Meanwhile, Firestar now flew over the metal-slag that had been left in her wake and exited the course's tunnel, landing just a few yards outside of it.

"Good goin' there Firestar!" Siryn was the first to say, as the dark-blue and silver cape attached to her uniform ruffled briskly behind her, while she and the rest of the junior-girls ecstatically hurried over to congratulate Firestar on such an outstanding performance.

"Guys, did ya see that! Ah ain't ever seen anyone beat the obstacle-course that fast, and especially not by themselves either!" An astonished Cannonball exclaimed next, as he and the rest of the junior-boys stood in astonishment of Firestar's amazing feat.

But, they weren't the only ones who were marveling at the almost clinic-like demonstration that Firestar had just put on for them.

"That was most impressive, Firestar." Professor Xavier now said to her from the control booth up above, as he spoke into the microphone on the computer console directly in front of him.

"Thank you, Professor." Angelica smiled, as she looked up at him through the control booth's window.

"You are quite advanced, I must say. Especially, when one considers that Miss Frost had placed you on her junior-level squad at the Massachusetts Academy?" Professor Xavier remembered and commented.

"Not really. I mean, Miss Frost used to have me and the other junior-students' run sims sorta like that one all the time.

As a warm-up.

Before, she would make us do our real workouts."

As Firestar revealed that little tidbit to them, doing so without any pretensions regarding her own abilities, nor was she attempting to be conceited or brag about them, Professor Xavier and Bobby simply turned and looked over at one completely speechless. It was partially because of Angelica's telling them, in such a matter-of-fact manner, that Emma Frost's students were on a much faster learning track in grasping how to use their mutant powers. But, it was also because Bobby had silently pointed down onto the computer console, which revealed that Angelica's time in completing this exercise had actually ranked her up with those scores of the senior-level students'. In a couple of cases, Angelica had either tied or beaten some of those times, with Bobby's own personal-best included among them.

"Well, Mirage, having completed today's training objective, you and your team are excused and free to leave. Cannonball, if you would begin preparing your team for their turn?" Professor Xavier now said, as he excused the girls' for the day, not that he had much of a choice in the matter.

As he watched the junior-girls' make their way over to the Danger Room's exit, Professor Xavier now realized that he would have to reassess whether or not he was pushing his students hard enough in their drills? And given what Angelica had just told him about her former fellow students who, for all intents and purposes, were the Brotherhood's junior-level members, Professor X also knew that he would have to reexamine where that fine-line stood between allowing his own novice students' to excel in completely comprehending the full-extent of their powers; and knowing when he was actually forcing them forward too far, too fast, and too soon before they were ready. It was a delicate line, which Xavier now wondered whether Emma Frost had considered to even exist?

Meanwhile, as the girls' proceeded out of the Danger Room together, Angelica shot a quick glance over in Roberto's direction, but didn't receive one back from him. Roberto was definitely still stunned by what he had just seen her do, but beyond that, he also felt a slight tinge of jealousy towards her. Not so much because of her advanced abilities, or even because of the fact that she had gotten the opportunity to meet and fight alongside Spider-Man, who happened to be one of his all-time favorite heroes. No, it had to do with something that had been told to him a few weeks ago in New York City when he and John Allerdyce, the mutant also known as Pyro, had spoken briefly.

Despite the fact that Miss Frost had given her students' strict instructions not to discuss, or to even bring up the subject of what it was that they actually did behind-the-scenes at the Massachusetts Academy, John had recalled one-time overhearing Roberto complain about his desire to learn to use his powers beyond simply controlling them, back when he himself was still a student at Xavier's along with Roberto and the others. Deciding to ignore his Headmistress' forbidding decree in just this one instance, John took it upon himself to take Roberto out onto one of the secluded balconies at the Hellfire Club that night at the Gala, and then proceeded to inform the younger teen on how the students' at the Massachusetts Academy progressed at their own rate in learning how to master their mutant powers, and how they were allowed to do so as quickly as possible without any arbitrary limitations or restrictions being placed upon them.

It was a thought that had remained at the back of Roberto's mind, one which he was once again reminded of after seeing Angelica's proficient display of her powers today, as she had single-handedly bested this fairly difficult training-simulation right before his very eyes.

And, it was one of many things that Roberto would continue to mull over internally, among complicated ponderings that would most likely persist in his mind long after today's exercises had come to an end.

**………………………………………………………**

A short time later in the girls' locker-room…

After hitting the showers, following what was probably the shortest training-session that they had experienced in their time at Xavier's, the members of the girls' junior-squad were now talking as they got dressed. And, the main topic of discussion remained the performance that had been put on by the newest addition to their ranks, which they were all still pretty elated about.

"I have to give it to you, that shit you pulled back there in the Danger Room was pretty kick-ass!" Carmella remarked to Angelica, as she was the last to come out of the shower area, doing so with one huge white towel wrapped around her, while she had another in her hands to dry her lengthy and voluminously-frizzy chocolate brown hair, having had been within earshot the entire time to overhear the conversation that was taking place out here.

"If'n ye would'nae please mind it with the swearin'." Rahne scoldingly said to Carmella's comment, as she and most of the other girls' had for the most-part finished getting dressed. Rahne now sat on the black, hard-plastic surface of one of the benches in there, bent forward as she fumbled with the laces of her black, canvas walking-shoes.

"Fine, she was pretty kick-butt. There, you happy now 'Mom'?" Carmella replied, as she sighed, shook her head a little, and looked down at Rahne with a frowning expression. As Carmella walked off, Rahne simply looked away from her and back down towards the locker-room floor, so that she could finish tying her shoes.

"No matter how you say it, you still made Roberto eat his own words." Dani said next, as she sat on the same bench beside Rahne carefully reaffixing her two long pigtails that hung down on both sides, which Dani had plaited her naturally long, blue-black hair into. All the while, she was facing and speaking to Angelica, who was sitting on another bench right across from them.

"More like ye had Roberto chokin' on 'em, like they was day-ol' colcannon. Which is an accomplishment in itself, considerin' he's always runnin' that big mouth o' his." Terry added next, as she laughed a little while she turned to make her comment directly to Angelica, who was sitting right beside her, Terry's own Irish-accent now also made quite noticeable to her new teammate.

"Really guys, you don't have to make such a big deal out of it. I was only trying to do my best in there, it's not like me and Roberto have some kinda rivalry goin' on." Angelica replied to all of their remarks, and was starting to feel a little uncomfortable by all of the attention that she was getting. Mainly, because it hadn't been too often that Angelica was ever on the receiving end of such accolades, especially from any of her peers previously.

"I don't believe that anyone is trying to infer that you do. It is merely the way in which you were able to so effectively and convincingly validate your point to him." Amara was the last to chime in, as this prim and polite girl with curly, brownish-blonde hair stood just a few feet away from them, and was leaning back up against one of the nearby metal lockers as she spoke to the other girls'.

"Yeah, listen to 'Lava-girl'. She definitely knows what she's talkin' about, even if sometimes we don't." Carmella teasingly declared aloud, as she now stood in the next row of lockers over from them and finished dressing.

"And thank you for the kind words, 'Bubble-girl'." Amara smiled and immediately shot back, as she called her response out to her roommate over the lockers' directly behind her, which currently separated the two girls.

"Well, I think we've said enough about icky-boy's busted ego. What are we gonna do, now that we've got a whole day off to ourselves?" Dani asked the group, as she stood up with her hands in the front pockets of her faded bleach-washed jeans, also wearing a red retro-wool ski sweater over her extremely slender-physique with them, a sweater which was zipped up in the front and had thin black-and-orange horizontal stripes on it.

"We could head into Salem Center, 'n show Angelica around?" Terry suggested, as she sat now fully dressed in a solid mauve pullover, cable-knit sweater, and accessorized her look with gabardine-twill slacks in a light safari-green color, which had cargo-pockets on the side and slash-pockets in back.

"That sounds like a fabulous idea!" Amara enthusiastically squealed, as her blue-eyes lit up in excitement and she came over to the other girls' wearing a very stylish long, cowl-neck sweater, which was made from a stretchy black material and zippered down the back, along with an as equally expensive pair of plaid coral and periwinkle wide-cuffed trousers, which sort of flared out at the bottom.

"I know I sure as hel…heck, wouldn't mind getting away from here for a while." Carmella also agreed, as she came back around the corner from the other side of the lockers and threw another fleeting glance in Rahne's direction.

Rahne was still sitting down on one of the locker-room benches next to Dani, dressed in one of her usually conservative outfits. This particular combo consisted of a gray button-front cardigan sweater and a white turtleneck underneath it, along with a matching gray long-skirt and a pair of black stockings.

Once she had made it back around with the others, Carmella showed off for them a modest khaki button-up shirt with mock patch-pockets on the chest that she had on. A blouse, which Carmella was wearing with the top two buttons undone and with both of the sleeves rolled all the way up to her elbows, and had on black, boot-cut denim jeans as part of her outfit. Then, Carmella turned her attention over towards Angelica.

"How about you, you feel like headin' into town?" Carmella now asked, as she looked down and solicited Angelica's opinion of their preliminary plans.

"Oh…um, it sounds like a great idea to me." Angelica told the others, as she sat wearing an ensemble consisting of a white and aqua-blue striped, knit hoody with matching aqua sweats, and was both surprised and happy that they actually wanted to know what her feelings on the matter were.

As the girls' now began to map out an itinerary for the day, which included but was not limited to them hitting the Salem Center Mall, Angelica was starting to feel more at ease in her new surroundings. Partially, it was due to Angelica having gotten past some of her own insecurities that had continually hounded her, and over her earlier fear about embarrassing herself in front of her new classmates on her first day at Xavier's. But beyond that, it was because Dani, Terry, Rahne, Amara, and Carmella seemed now to be genuinely accepting her.

As a friend.

**……………………………………………………**

Later, the girls' made their way out to a small highway close to campus, which had a bus-route that ran past the Xavier estate every few hours. After waiting at the stop to catch this mostly-empty bus heading into Salem Center, they soon found themselves shuttled into the moderately-sized town's business-district referred to as New Salem Center, which is were its main retail-nexus was located, the Salem Center Mall.

Following an extended shopping trip that took up most of the afternoon, which had included them perusing through just about every department store and boutique in the mall where they had seemingly tried on a few dozen outfits between them, Rahne, Amara, Angelica, Dani, and Carmella had finally called it a day. But, as they made their way out of the mall, the girls' continued with the gossipy-talk that had dominated most of their conversations' on this day.

"But, ye still didn't answer the question. Ye said he was kinda cute, but the question was whether or not you'd actually consider doin' it with him?" Terry made this fairly provocative inquiry, as all five girls' walked through the mall together towards one of its main entrances.

"And my answer, again, Little-Miss-Nosy is I don't know. It's something I'd really have to think about it, whether it's with him or with anyone for that matter." Dani, being the girl to whom the question had been directed replied, as she looked over towards Terry while they walked on.

"Can we please find somethin' else t'discuss?" Rahne now implored of Dani and Terry, as she and the other girls' followed behind the two. Rahne up to this point had remained fairly quiet, but it was easy to tell by her reaction that the slightly-racy subject matter that had dominated most of today's girl-talk was starting to make her very uncomfortable.

"You know, everyone has been saying that there already is something secret and torrid going on between the two of you." Amara giggled and told Dani next, as she continued the conversation without even a pause in deference to Rahne, all while she carried a couple of shopping bags along in her hands. In the bag in Amara's left-hand was a new outfit, which went perfectly with the Prada handbag that she had bought, and was now carrying in the shopping bag in her other hand.

"And who's everyone, the four of you?" Dani smiled and skeptically raised an eyebrow, as she looked accusatively at Terry, Amara, Carmella and Rahne.

"I didn't say anything like that." Carmella replied with a slight grin, as she was walking alongside Rahne and Angelica, but suddenly stopped and took a step back with her hands out in front of her in an absolving manner, "Just, that a couple times I saw the two of you heading off somewhere on the campus grounds. Alone."

"And, ye two were awfully cozy at that big t'do in New York a few weeks ago." Terry added, referring to the Fall Formal Gala, which was a joint-dance that had been held at the Hellfire Club, and had been attended by students from both Xavier's School for the Gifted and from the Massachusetts Academy.

"Oh, so that automatically means there HAS to be something goin' on between us then?" Dani cynically laughed, as she tossed these rumors back at them, "Just because a guy and a girl are really good friends, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're anything else beyond that."

"And, just because ye're so boy-crazy, doesn't automatically mean the rest of us are either." Rahne now remarked to Terry, as she once again inserted herself into the conversation.

"In yuir case, there's only one boy that ye're crazy about. Saammmuuel Guthrie." Terry teasingly responded, as she intentionally pronounced Sam's first name very slowly for Rahne's benefit.

"Where'd ye get a daft idea like that!" Rahne unexpectedly exclaimed, as the girls' had reached the mall's exit and went outside on this partially-overcast fall afternoon.

"It's kinda obvious. I mean, you are always staring at him all the time." Carmella unabashedly pointed out for her, which put Rahne into an even more defensive mood.

"**I'm 'nae always lookin' at him all the time**!" Rahne semi-shouted back at them, as their small group came to an abrupt-halt right outside of the mall, with this intensely private girl now utterly and completely embarrassed by their apparent observations of her.

"It's alright Rahne, there's nothing wrong with having a crush on someone." Angelica now said, as she intuitively came up and put her arm around Rahne to try and calm the girl down, before she lost control and shifted into her wolf-form out there in public.

With that bit of melodrama having now passed, the girls' were just about to resume their journey out to the mall's bus-stop so that they could catch a bus over to Harry's Hideaway, which was a favorite hang-out among Salem Center's teenage population.

But suddenly, the cell-phone in Amara's purse started to ring.

The Nova Roman-native proceeded to carefully sit her shopping bags down on the ground beside her, reached down into her purse, and then pulled her phone out to promptly answer it.

"Hello?" Amara said, as she spoke into the tiny receiver-end of her phone and waited for a reply.

As the others watched her with tremendous curiosity, they saw Amara attentively listening to whoever the caller was for a few moments, before she spoke again.

"Yes, we're still here and…yes, she is here with us also." Amara continued, as she answered what were obvious questions being posed to her from the caller, "No, not yet. Actually, we were on our way over to Harry's to…well, we just came outside, we're near the entrance by the sporting-goods store. Yes, that one, the extremely large one. Okay, we'll see you in a moment."

"Soooo, what was that all about?" Dani asked, as she took a few steps over towards Amara and then asked her the question that was on all of their minds, while Amara flipped her cell-phone closed.

"You know what you were saying just a minute ago, about it being alright for someone to have a crush on another?" Amara said, but instead of replying to Dani, she instead turned her gaze towards Angelica, "I hope that you are prepared to heed your own advice, because I'm confident that there is a certain upper-classman, whom we all know, that seems to have developed a rather sizable one on you."

While the other girls' didn't have a clue what she was talking about, Amara attempted to clarify things by giggling and pointing over at a SUV that was driving towards them across the mall's parking lot.

This midnight-blue Chevy Trailblazer pulled up and then slowed to a stop right in front of girls', which they all recognized as being from the considerable assortment of vehicles back in the school's enormous garage. When its driver slowly rolled his window down for them, the girls' could now see who was sitting behind the wheel and that it was none other than Bobby Drake.

When the boys' half of the Junior X-Men squad had completed their training session for the day, which took them more than three hours to finish, they came up and found that all of the girls' at the school were nowhere to be found. And, after some casual searching of his own throughout the mansion, which then stretched out onto the campus' outdoor grounds, Bobby came back inside and went straight to Professor Xavier's study to inform his Headmaster that the co-eds had all mysteriously disappeared.

To which, the Professor revealed to Bobby that the girls' had all gone into town.

When Bobby further asked the Professor how he knew all of this without the aid of Cerebro, Professor Xavier silently and non-chalantly responded by handing Bobby a small, folded piece of paper. Once he opened it, Bobby saw that it was a note that had been handwritten by Dani and that she had left for Professor Xavier on his desk in his study, which had told him exactly where it was that they were all going.

"I thought you guys probably wouldn't mind a lift over to Harry's, and then back to the school." Bobby now smiled and told the girls', as they could hear the sound of the automatic locks on all of the doors to the SUV being unlocked.

But, while his statement had been meant for all of them, Bobby had subconsciously focused his attention entirely on Angelica while he was speaking. Which shouldn't have been a surprise, since Bobby hadn't been able to stop himself from thinking about this attractive young female all day, and he definitely hadn't been able to get the kiss that they had shared together the night before out of his mind.

"It was pretty thoughtful of you to drive all the way down here, just to pick us up." Angelica said to Bobby, as she came over and stood at the driver's side window, and was smilingly thanking him.

Accepting his offer, Angelica then went around the front of the SUV to open one of the its doors. But, she abruptly stopped in her tracks when she noticed that the other four girls' hadn't budged an inch, and were all still standing in place in front of the mall's paved entranceway.

"Aren't you guys gonna get in?" Angelica turned back to ask her new friends, with the passenger-side door to the SUV now half ajar in front of her.

"Thanks, but we'll stick with public transportation. Besides, I think you're the one that Bobby really wants to give a ride to anyways." Carmella smirkingly replied. And, Dani and Terry couldn't help but join in with Amara's almost contagious giggling in response to Carmella's remark, which now caused Angelica's face to turn slightly red as she blushed a little.

Dani, Amara, and Terry had each noticed that when Bobby pulled up and spoke to them just now, that his eyes had remained fixated on just Angelica the entire time. Which, they had also noticed Bobby doing the night before, when Angelica was telling them all about how they had run into Spider-Man during their fight in Manhattan.

But luckily for Angelica, she had been spared what would have been ten-times the embarrassment that she was currently feeling, given the fact that none of the other girls' knew about the spontaneous kiss that had occurred between her and Bobby last night, while they were on their way back to Westchester from her home in New Jersey.

Amara, Dani, Terry, and Rahne now began walking towards the bus-stop, and to also without doubt continue their gossipy-conversation on their brand-new speculation regarding the romantic implications of Bobby's showing up to pick up Angelica. Meanwhile, Bobby and Angelica were now once again left alone in an automotive vehicle, a situation which they were fast becoming used to.

"So, do you wanna head over to Harry's, or stop somewhere else first?" Bobby now asked Angelica, since they had the remaining afternoon hours to kill.

"Why don't we…" Angelica was saying, as she climbed into the passenger-side seat and the closed the SUV's door beside her, when she suddenly interrupted herself, "Um, never mind, I'll let you decide."

"No, what is it?" Bobby now urgingly asked her, as he wanted to know what Angelica had in mind.

"Well, I was gonna suggest we go see a movie, since it's still pretty early." Angelica went ahead and told him, as she sat and dreamily inspected his form beneath his maroon, quarter-zip front sweater and the pleated sand-colored pants that he had on, before she snapped herself back into the present and turned her attention back towards his face.

"Okay, so what do you wanna see?" Bobby further asked, showing that he was certainly receptive to the idea.

"You'll probably think it's kinda lame." Angelica was saying, as she paused yet again.

"I won't be able to think anything, not if you don't tell me first." Bobby replied.

"I really wanted to go see that new Harry Potter movie." Angelica told him, as she finally revealed to Bobby the picture that she had been dying to take in, "I mean, I'm a huge fan of the series. I've even managed to read all of the books."

"That sounds fine to me." Bobby said to Angelica, doing so in a tone that relayed that he genuinely thought her movie suggestion was a good one.

Although, just about any reason that wound up resulting in Bobby getting the opportunity to spend some more time alone with Angelica would have been equally as okay with him, as he now put the Trailblazer into gear and set off for the Salem Center movie theatre, which was just a few blocks away from the mall.

**……………………..…………………………..……**

More than two and a half hours later, the movie had let out and Bobby and Angelica now found that nighttime had set in earnest at this late evening hour. They now also found themselves exiting the theatre and making their way back to the SUV, talking to each other about the finer points of the film that they had just seen.

"So, what'd you think?" Angelica asked Bobby, as she had had been silently wondering to herself the entire time during the movie if it had been a mistake to suggest that they come here this evening?

"I've never been that much into Harry Potter, but it was okay. And it was a lot darker than I thought a movie like that would be." Bobby replied in regards to the overall plot and themes within the movie, as they continued across the parking lot together, "What do you think, was it better or worse than the book?"

"Actually, I would have to say neither. It's just different. Most times when a movie is based off something else, like a book, it's going to have to be different anyways, and there are just some things that won't work up there." Angelica told him, as she personally-referenced some of the many other books that she had also read, only to later see them adapted into their big-screen versions.

"Either way, I don't think I could picture myself going to a school where weird and freaky stuff like that was always happening." Bobby was saying to Angelica, when she suddenly stopped right in the middle of the movie-theatre parking lot, and just stood there looking at him.

"Uh. Huh…" Angelica said in response to his statement, raising an eyebrow and folding her arms in front of her while shooting Bobby a smirking glance, which couldn't have been any more obvious as to what she was currently thinking.

"Yeah…um, right. Mutant-High, and all that. You can go ahead and scratch what I just said." Bobby laughed and told Angelica, as his momentary memory-lapse came to a quick end.

"It's just a darn shame the evening had to end so early, else we could continue this conversation and I could help point out some more examples of art imitating life, if you'd like?" Angelica sarcastically commented, as they now resumed their trek across the movie-theatre's parking lot.

"Okay. Sure. I know somewhere private where we can go, so you can finish your short dissertation to me on 'surreal-ness'. And then, you can even try to explain to me why reality-TV is still going strong, even though its fifteen minutes should've been up hours ago?" Bobby playfully replied to Angelica, which drew a brief, but heartfelt laugh from her.

Then, without even thinking about it, Bobby went and put his arm around Angelica, pulling her closer to him while they continued their journey across the parking lot together towards the SUV. And for the first time, Bobby realized just how much he enjoyed having Angelica be so very close to him, and how warm and naturally pleasant that it felt.

**………………………………………………………**

The Hill.

While being a fairly descriptive nickname for this area, which overlooked a good section of the township of Salem Center down below, in all actuality The Hill was more of a flat, man-made escarpment than anything. With it being reasonably secluded, The Hill was a popular destination for individuals, particularly couples, seeking a private place to go to be alone. And, it seemed to be the perfect nightspot for those who desired somewhere to go, where they could have uninterrupted conversation.

But, for most of the couples' that wound up on this cloistered jaunt, the temptation of a quiet and dark night with their significant other could just as easily be an overwhelming enticement.

Which, Bobby and Angelica could certainly attest to at the moment.

Rather than talking about art, or life, or about any other topic that existed underneath the big, bright stars that were visible on this clear and now cloudless night, Bobby and Angelica had instead found themselves lip-locked, and were now heavily immersed in one major make-out session in the spacious backseat of a borrowed SUV. And, as opposed to the previous night, where she had felt slightly apprehensive about being in such a romantic situation with him, Angelica had in a remarkably short amount of time grown far more comfortable with herself, and even more so in being with Bobby.

But even with that taken into consideration, as Bobby and Angelica slowly kissed, while holding onto one another so tightly that it seemed as though they were anchoring one another to this world, they would soon be reminded that such a simple thing as a kiss could still come with its own set of complications and unanticipated consequences. Especially, when hormones and emotions were running as hot and as heavy as they currently were between these two very unique individuals.

"Um, Bobby. I think we'd better stop." Angelica now told Bobby, as she pulled away from him and they then sat looking at one another in the backseat of the SUV, which was parked on this elevated precipice over-looking Westchester County's largest populated area, with Kasabian's L.S.F playing on the radio in the background.

"Why, what's wrong?" Bobby asked Angelica, both of their faces still somewhat flushed from the passionate exchange that they had been engaged in just moments before.

"Well, you're getting me all wet." Angelica informed Bobby, as she didn't look at him directly in the face, but instead turned her gaze towards the rear-passenger window right behind him.

"Huh?" Was the only thing that Bobby could utter and manage to get out in response.

"I think your ice-powers and my heat-powers are doing some kinda weird condensation thing." Angelica now clarified for Bobby, as she looked all around them and inspected the SUV's interior, "I'm starting to feel my sweater getting damp from it, and you can see how we're fogging up all the windows in here."

"Boy, are we!" Bobby now remarked, as he looked at all of the vehicle's windows and realized that their heightened emotional-states had caused both him and Angelica to slightly and momentarily lose control of their powers, "I don't think a fogged window or two ever hurt anyone, but I am sorry about messing up your sweater. I guess I'll just have to learn not to get so excited when I'm around you?"

"Better not!" Angelica grinned and happily replied, as she lightly nudged Bobby on his side with her elbow, "Besides, I guess I can always dry it out later, and I won't even need a dryer to do it."

As she sat looking up into Bobby's beautiful eyes, Angelica went and placed her arms up across his shoulders and clasped her hands around the back of his neck, before she leaned forward into him. This seemingly unlikely couple once again started to deeply and heavily kiss each other, and immediately picked up right where they had just left off.

And in doing so, these two diametrically-opposed extremes that Bobby and Angelica metaphorically represented in their tangible forms-

Hot and Cold.

Fire and Ice.

Had now found a way to blissfully co-exist together. Not in dichotomy to be forever separated, but instead as a single entity now made up of two parts, slowly burning and melting into a greater whole.

_Into a Coldfire_…

**…………………………………………………………**

**Epilogue **

Being the ambitious, and at times overbearing, CEO of her own Fortune-500 company known world-wide as Frost International, as well as serving as Headmistress to the exclusively private Massachusetts Preparatory Academy, Emma Frost was a woman who knew a thing or two about reaching the pinnacles of success, and also firmly understood what it took to get and remain there.

Growing up as she had, in a family where the very name 'Frost' was just as much of a description of the emotional climate of their household, as it was the bandied-about last name of her blue-blood ancestral lineage, Emma had been prepared to possess such a mindset at a very early age. For her, those lessons that had been imposed upon her from her father, to strive to attain a relentless drive to succeed, to be better than the next man no matter what the cost, had remained with Emma well into adulthood. All in spite of her own youthful, and ultimately futile, attempts to deviate from that path that he had laid out for her.

Which, is also why Emma Frost felt a deep sense of regret for what she now had to do, the one thing that she had sworn to herself to never do again in her lifetime.

Admit failure.

"…so, I thought that you should be made aware of the situation, and what has transpired." Emma now finished her statement, as she stood in the center of her private office right in front of her desk, an office that was located on the campus of the Massachusetts Academy in Snow Valley.

Foregoing the more conservative wardrobe normally associated with a woman of her position at such a distinguished institution of learning, Emma was instead dressed in a pristine, white two-piece leather corset outfit with matching knee-high leather boots and arm-length gloves, along with a white full-length, fur-trimmed shawl that draped down from her shoulders, which was the traditional attire worn by the White Queen of the Hellfire Club's Inner-Circle.

"Charles Xavier is slowly making himself into a veritable thorn in our side, first with the Blaire-affair, and now this." Sebastian Shaw, who was CEO of the equally prominent Shaw Industries replied.

Sebastian himself was now standing in the middle of his own corner, top-floor office at Shaw Industries' headquarters located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He stood in front of an enormous video-screen that took up a good section of one of the walls in there as he addressed Emma, doing so while dressed in a far more understated black suit, with a black dress-shirt underneath and a black and gray striped-tie over it.

"But no matter, I will show you how a Lord Cardinal deals with such treachery. Xavier and his X-Men will all learn that there is a price to be paid for meddling in the affairs of the Inner-Circle, and Firestar most importantly will quickly understand that her betrayal will come at an especially high-cost to those around her." Sebastian calmly finished, as he abruptly signed off from his video-conference call with Emma, and now slowly paced back and forth in front of the blank video-screen.

After a few moments of contemplative pacing, Sebastian turned his attention to the other person in his office with him, who had been silently sitting off to the side taking in their conversation the entire time, while watching a digital-broadcast signal being picked on a small, handheld receiver in her palm.

"Shall I summon the Inner Circle's elite mercenaries?" Tessa, Sebastian's raven-haired assistant now asked of him, as she looked up from the device in her hand, doing so in a manner that almost seemed as though she were reading his mind. Like Sebastian, Tessa was also wearing a rather reserved ensemble, consisting of a charmeuse-silk blouse in ebony, which had ruffles that ran down the front from its round, banded-collar, along with a matching pair of black form-fitting pants.

All this time, Tessa had been watching, or more accurately cataloguing, Emma and Sebastian's conversation, while simultaneously making a mental note regarding a news report that had just come across on her handheld device about a disturbance last night on the streets of Tokyo, Japan.

"No. If it were simply brute force that was required, then I would most assuredly have gathered them already. But, considering that they were soundly trounced by just four of the X-Men, I believe that I will have need of a far more skilled-man for this assignment." Sebastian said, as he stopped his pacing across his office and turned back to talk to Tessa, with a huge and ominous grin now clearly evident on his face, "If you would be a dear, and fetch my Black-Folder for me."

Tessa immediately did as was asked of her, standing up and going over to a hidden wall-safe in his office to retrieve Sebastian Shaw's Black-Folder. In reality, his Black-Folder was a CD-ROM labeled with the words 'Black-Folder' on it.

"Tessa, I've been meaning to ask if have you been able to locate that no-account son of mine?" Sebastian now inquired her, as he had went and sat down behind his desk, his right-hand patiently tapping the surface of his desk next to a computer keyboard.

"I've left a number of voice and text messages for him, per your request, but I have yet to hear a response from him." Tessa replied, as she stood and punched in the safe's combination on the keypad located on its door, "From what I was able to gather during our last, and very brief conversation, in addition to what I was able to extrapolate from the data at my disposal, Shinobi was heading to the Far East for what appears to be some business venture, most likely in Hong Kong, which he apparently wants to keep under wraps."

"More likely, he was heading there to congregate with his ribble-rabble friends for a week of frolicking and carousing." Sebastian disparagingly commented, as Tessa now brought his Black-Folder over for him to sift through.

On this disc in Tessa's hand were the names of individuals whom Sebastian had encountered and had prior dealings with over the years, along with people whom he had simply learned about through his various contacts worldwide. People, who despite their various backgrounds, all shared a single and definingly common-trait.

They all possessed a masterful propensity for doling out death and outright mayhem in frighteningly lethal quantities, but only doing so when the price was right.

At least in most of their cases.

**……………………………………………….……**

Meanwhile, back in Snow Valley, Massachusetts on the campus of the Massachusetts Academy, a woman there was also currently preoccupied with an important task of her own.

A woman who wasn't Emma Frost, however.

In the senior-students' residence on campus, which was affectionately referred to as 'The Brotherhood House' by those same residents, a woman with silver-gray hair and who was much older than the student-body and most of the other individuals with whom she shared this dwelling, sat locked away in her second-floor bedroom. Irene Adler, who had on a plain, yet classic blue long-sleeved skirt-set, now sat at a desk by a window that she unfortunately was unable to see out of, busily involved in what had become a fairly routine labor of hers.

Ever since her early teens, back when her mutant power to see the future first emerged, Irene had been both gifted with the ability to know with a modest degree of certainty what tomorrow might bring, while also being cursed with the responsibility of possessing that knowledge. And while her clairvoyant gift was not an exact science, with most of the time being far from it, there were some visions that would sporadically come to Irene, and would continually re-occur to her with such force and vigor that they seemed to be portentous omens being sent to her warning of events in both the distant, as well as the near future.

When she would receive these unique visions, which were easily distinguishable to her from her usual ones, Irene would write them down in what had become her private journals. When her powers first burgeoned forth and granted her a window into the infinite passage of time itself, it did so with such ferocity that she wrote down everything that was being shown to her. But in the decades over her rather extensive lifetime since she had begun keeping her journals, Irene had wound up recording numerous volumes of them, some of which she had gone back and had later amended when she had become more experienced at analyzing her own visions, and had realized the fact that many of her early predictions didn't belong to this timeline and wouldn't ever come true, at least not for those in this here and now.

But for those predictions, which were so clear and vivid to Irene that she felt without a doubt they belonged to this timeline and stood a real and very strong possibility of happening here, they were the ones that remained. And, they had been compiled into these numerous journal volumes, whose existence only Irene and one other person knew about, and which she still wrote in from time to time, although with far less frequency than she did when she was younger.

Case in point, was an entry that she was now making into her most recent journal volume, which regarded an unassuming girl whom Irene foresaw one day as playing a pivotal role a number of years from now in helping to influence the course of human history…

_"A bright and shining comet, capable of scorching the heavens itself on her own, will one day help to serve as a guiding beacon to those mighty beings assembled in a fantastic battle to save this world from the ultimate Chaos…"_

With this intentionally shrouded and cryptic message now inscribed into her journal alongside a multitude of other auguries, Irene now placed her pen down on the desk beside it and she sat there by this closed window reflecting on what she had just written. Those individuals of a pessimistic viewpoint, if ever given the opportunity to read these words, might say that with them Irene's prediction had unfairly sealed the fate of this girl from New Jersey, whose future should have been left up for her to decide. But, those of a far more positive inclination would most likely call it something else.

Destiny.

**………………………………………..………………………….**

**To be continued,**

Let the **Headgames **begin…


End file.
